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Frontispiece. 



The Unity of Nature 



BY 



THE DUKE OF ARGYLL 

AUTHOR OF "THE REIGN OF LAW," ETC., ETC. 




G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

NEW YORK : 27 & 29 WEST 23D STREET 
LONDON : 25 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN 



Press of 
G. P. Putnam's Sons 
New York 

* 



r 



737 



PREFACE. 



S explained in the Preface to the first Edition 



of the "Reign of Law," published in 1866, 
I had intended to follow the chapter on Law in 
Politics with a concluding chapter on Law in Chris- 
tian Theology. It was natural to reserve for that 
chapter all direct reference to some of the most 
fundamental facts of Human Nature. Yet, with- 
out such reference, the Reign of Law, especially 
in the Realm of Mind, could not even be ap- 
proached in some of its very highest and most 
important aspects. At that time, however, I 
shrank from entering upon questions so profound, 
of such critical import, and so inseparably connected 
with religious controversy. 

Further reflection has convinced me that the 
great subject of Law in Christian Theology is not 
only incapable of being treated in a single chapter, 
but cannot even be entered upon at all without pre- 




vi 



Preface. 



paratory investigations and preparatory arguments 
which it would take volumes to exhaust. What has 
to be done, in the first place, is to establish some 
method of inquiry, and to find some secure avenue 
of approach. Before dealing with any part of the 
Theology which is peculiarly Christian, we must 
trace the connection between the Reign of Law 
and the ideas which are alike fundamental to 
all Religions, and inseparable from the facts of 
Nature. It is to this preliminary work that the 
following chapters have been devoted. Modern 
Doubt has called in question not only the whole 
subject of inquiry, -but the whole Faculties by 
which it can be pursued. Until these have been 
tested and examined by some standard which is 
elementary and acknowledged, we cannot even 
begin the work. 

It has appeared to me that not a few of the 
problems which lie deepest in this inquiry, and 
which perplex us most, are soluble in the light of 
the Unity of Nature. Or if these problems are not 
entirely soluble in this light, at least they are broken 
up by it, and are reduced to fewer and simpler 
elements. The following chapters are an attempt 
to follow this conception along a few of the in- 
numerable paths which it opens up, and which 
radiate from it through all the phenomena of the 



Preface. 



vii 



Universe, as from an exhaustless centre of Energy 
and of Sueeestion. 

It is the great advantage of these paths that they 
are almost infinite in number and equally various in 
direction. To those who walk in them nothing can 
ever come amiss. Every subject of interest, every 
object of wonder, every thought of mystery, every 
obscure analogy, every strange intimation of likeness 
in the midst of difference — the whole external and 
the whole internal world — is the province and the 
property of him who seeks to see and to understand 
the Unity of Nature. It is a thought which may be 
pursued in every calling — in the busiest hours of an 
active life, and in the calmest moments of rest and 
of reflection. And if, in the wanderings of our own 
spirit, and in the sins and sorrows of Human Life, 
there are terrible facts which resist all classification 
and all analysis, it will be a good result of our 
endeavours to comprehend the Unity of Nature, 
should it lead us better to see, and more definitely 
to understand, those features in the character of 
Man which constitute The Great Exception. 

I commend these chapters to the consideration of 
those who care for such inquiries. Like the earlier 
Work, of which this is a sequel, much of it has 
appeared separately in other forms. These portions 
have all been reconsidered, and to some extent 



VIII 



Preface. 



re-written ; whilst a new meaning has been given to 
the reasoning they contain by the place assigned to 
them in a connected Treatise. The chapters which 
were published last year as articles in the " Con- 
temporary Review " called forth some criticisms 
from writers both in England and America from 
which I have derived advantage. 



Inveraray, Dec. 1883. 



ARGYLL, 



contents; 

CHAPTER I. 

PAGB 

General Definitions and Illustrations of the Unity 

of Nature — What it is and what it is not . 1-45 

The System of Nature — The Unity of God — Theism and Monotheism — 
Distinctions in Nature — The Work of Specialists — Selection and 
Generalisation in Science — Unity in the Universality of Gravitation — 
Mechanism of the Heavens — Light — Fact of an Universal Ether — 
Nature of the Universal Ether — Laws and Constitution of Light — 
Radiant Heat— The So- called Transmutation of Physical Forces — 
Magnetism — Chemical Affinity — Sound — Solar Light— The System 
of Adjustments — Distinction "between Light and Heat — Relations 
between Light and Heat — Chemical Effects of Light — The Unity 
of . Mind and Sentiment — Protoplasm and Life— Characteristics of 
Vitality — " Molecular Arrangement " — The Processes of Crystallisa- 
tion — The Formation of Bone — The Work of "Differentiation"— 
The "Nucleated Cell "—Foundations of Organic Mechanism. 

CHAPTER II. 
"Man's Place in the Unity of Nature . . . 46-80 

The Composition of Man's Body — The Fundamental Facts of Organic 
Life — The Amoeba — The Primary Agent in Building the House of 
Life — Circulating Fluids of the Body — The Language of Sensation— 
The Science of Comparative Anatomy — The Doctrine of Homologies 
— Relationship of Man with Lower Animals through Organic Struc- 
ture — Adaptation and Adjustment in Organic Life — Subordination 
of the Physical Forces — Sensation in the Animal Kingdom — The 
Doctrine of Idealism — The Exercises of Mind — Adjustments between 
Senses and their Objects — Unity of Senses with corresponding Appe« 
tites — Affinities of Sense-Impressions — Instinct of the Lower Animals 
—-Production of the Gall-fly — Mechanical Adjustment— Automata. 



X 



Contents. 



CHAPTER III. 

PAGB 

Animal Instinct in its Relation to the Mind of 

Man 81-125 

The Dipper or Water-Ousel — The Red-breasted Merganser or Dun- 
Diver — The Common Wild Duck — Mimicry by a Moth— Instinct 
the Foundation of Experience — Instinct dependent on Organic 
Apparatus — Instinct Congenital and Innate — Living Automata non- 
sense — Animals regarded as Machines — The Water-Ousel a Living 
Machine — Instinct an Inspiration involving Faith — Counterfeiting by 
Birds— Knowledge and Reason implicit in Instinct — Doctrine of 
Descartes — Reflex Nerve-Action — Consciousness and Sensation de- * 
pendent on Organic Structure — Man a Reasoning and Self-Con- 
scious Machine — Mind in Man — Duality of Mental Operations — 
The "Two Voices" in Man — Adjusted Harmony between Instinct 
and Nature — Physical Structure and Freedom of the Will — A Con- 
sciousness of Freedom Warranted 

CHAPTER IV. 
On the Limits of Human Knowledge . . .126-165 

The Doubt of the Agnostic— The Philosophy of Nescience — Limitations 
of Mind and Spirit — Intensity of the Desire for Knowledge — A 
Reserve of Power — The Conceptions of Space and Time — Of Force 
and Matter — Conservation and Dissipation of Energy — The Concept 
of Causation— Antecedence, Uniform and Necessary — Correlation 
of Forces — The Law of Continuity — The Infinite a Conception of 
Science — Experience the Ground and Basis of Knowledge — The 
Mind of Man a Part of the System of the Universe — Intuitive 
Indexes of Higher Truths — The Immortal Service of Kant — Laws 
of Thought Laws of Nature — Relative Knowledge — Things in Them- 
selves — The Perception of Relations — The Knowledge of Matter — 
Knowing a Thing "in Itself"— Our Knowledge of Light and Sound 
— Order of Precedence in Knowledge — The What, How, and Why 
of Human Inquiry— Faculties of the Human Mind — The Knowledge 
of the Related and the Real. 

CHAPTER V. 
On the Truthfulness of Human Knowledge . 166-206- 

A Charge of Anthropomorphism— Man-Formism and Man-Soulism— 
Central Idea of the Charge— Reason and Knowledge— Anthropo- 
psychism — Distinction recognised in Language between Man and 



Contents. 



Nature — The Phenomena of Mind not confined to Man — Physical 
Forces in Nature — Contrast of a Work of Human Art and a Work 
of Nature — Arrowheads and Fossil Teeth — A Work of Beaver Art — 
Points of Contact of Works of Nature and Works of Art — Animals 
commissioned Servants of Nature — Man the Creature and Child of 
the Natural System — Unity between Structure and Function — Out- 
sidedness and Insidedness — Downwardness and Upwardness — Aspects ^ 
of Relationship of Mind to Matter — The Seemingly Automatic — 
Chains of Physical Causation — The Intelligibility of Nature — Pur- 
pose and Intelligence — Deceptions of a Spurious Anthropomorphism 
— Mind Pre-supposed in Structure of the Brain — Constructive Agency 
outside the Apparatus — Abstract Conceptions in Interpretations of 
Nature. 

CHAPTER VI. 

1/ 

On the Elementary Constitution of Matter in Rela- 
tion to the Inorganic ..... 207-241 

The Materialistic Philosophy of the Ancients — Atomism, Ancient and 
Modern — The Phenomena of Weight — The Force of Gravitation — 
Crudity of Old Materialism— The " Molecular Constitution " — Germ 
Development — The Atom of Modern Chemical Science— "Valency " 
of Atoms — Chemical Combinations — Affinity of Atoms — The Automatic 
Forces of Nature— Chemistry an Instrument of Purpose — Mysterious 
Forces and Laws of Chemical Affinity — Inorganic Combinations 
seemingly Accidental but really Systematic— Affinities of Oxygen— 
The Composition and Properties of Water — The Fulness of Life in 
the Ocean — Marine Organisms — Relations between the Organic and 
Inorganic — Chemistry and the Metals — Fundamental Principle under- 
lying Chemical Affinity — Subordination of Physical Causation. 



CHAPTER VII. 

The Elementary Constitution of Matter in Relation 

to the Organic . . . . . 242-273 

Organic Chemistry — Structure of the Living "Cell" — The Chemistry of 
the " Proteids " or "Hydro-Carbons" — "Building up" of Organic 
Compounds— Triumphs of the Laboratory— Structure of Crystals — 
" Molecular Arrangements " — The " Interlocking of Atoms " — Chemi- 
cal Combination essentially Dynamic— Inorganic Structures merely 
Chemical— Difference and Segregation in Organic Chemistry — Vege- 
table and Animal Tissues — The Unit of Organic Structure — The Cor- 
puscles of the Blood— Circulation of the Blood— Mysterious Processes 
of Crystallisation and of Organic Structure — The Science of Biology — 



xii 



Contents. 



The Foresights of Nature — A Doctrine of Comparative Anatomy — 
The Metamorphoses of Insects — The Principle of Development— Pre- 
determination of Lines of Variation — Germinal Structures — The 
Development of Germs — Creation and Evolution — Complementary- 
Notions. 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Manas the Representative of the Supernatural 274-315 

The Supernatural — Professor Tyndall's Elimination of the Supernatural 
— Propositions Denying the Supernatural — Man a Product of Evolu- 
tion — Fundamental Inconsistency in Agnostic Philosophy — The 
Phrase, " Nature abhors a Vacuum " — True and Legitimate Anthro- 
popsychism — Central Conception of Development Theory — The 
<k Circumnutation " of Plants — Turgescence of Cell-growth in Plants 
— Versatility of Plant-Life — The Correlation of Natural Forces — An- 
thropopsychic Language of Mr. Darwin and Professor Tyndall — De- 
velopment Theory founded on Teleology — Objection of Agassiz to 
Theory of Natural Selection — The Wealth of Mind in Nature — The 
Use of MetaphoricalLanguage — Nature essentially Anthropopsychic — 
Herbert Spencer's Definition of Life — Life an Adjustment — Matthew 
Arnold's Phrase for the Conception of a Divine Being — Tyndall's Test 
of Physical Truth — The Processes of " Differentiation " — Misuse of 
the Terms " Reflex Action " and " Potential Existence " — Classifica- 
tion of Scientific Phraseology — Matter and Mind — Mind in Man the 
Type of Mind in Nature — The Universe a System of Order and 
Beauty— Mind and Heart combined alone Adorable- -Relations of 
Man to God — The Human Mind a Faint Image of the Divine — Ua- 
wonhiness of our Moral Character. 



CHAPTER IX. 
Ok the Moral Character of Man . . . 316-373 

The Consciousness of Unworthiness— Impulse and Power — Man's Sense 
of Ignorance— Significance of the Reserve of Power— The Law of 
Man's Being— The Sense of Moral Obligation — The Association of 
Ideas— The Moral Sense Elementary in Character— The Analysis of 
Mind and of Matter— Conscience— The Faculty of Memory— The 
Faculties of Will and of Reflection— Mental Faculties not Indepen- 
dent—Subject-matter of Moral Sense— Freedom in Human Action — 
The Supreme Authority — The Moral Sense in Deeds of Cruelty — 
Central Question of ail Ethical Inquiry— Place and Rank of Intuition 
or Instinct — Mental Operations originate from Rudimentary Truths — 
The Moral Sense necessary to Human Development— The Acquisition 
of Knowledge — Common Element of all Moral Judgment — The 



Contents. 



xiii 



PAGB 



Antagonistic Schools of Ethical Philosophy — The Golden Rule and 
Utilitarianism— Elementary Signification of Utility — Fallacy in the 
Use of the Word Utility— The Chief End of Man— Utility a Test of 
Fitness— Utilitarianism practically Useless — Authority, not Utility, 
our Guide— The Golden Rule not the only Moral Intuition — Obe- 
dience Man's First Conception of Duty— All Nature Instinct with the 
Spirit of Authority— Man Responsive to an Imperial Code — Place of 
Instinct in Unity of Nature— Seeming Anomaly in Human Develop- 
ment — Mind in Creation and Mind in the Creature — The Absolutely 
Singular in Man — Tendencies to Progress and to Retrogression — 
Human Perversions — Checks to Population — Anomaly in the Con- 
duct of Savages — An Element of Confusion in the Universal Order— 
The Corruption of Human Nature— Inveterate Moral Perversities in 
Man. 



The Sense of Obligation an Elementary Conception of the Mind — The 
Feelings of Obligation — Moral Anomalies require Explanation — The 
Theory of Primordial Savagery — The Work of Evolution — What is- 
Meant by Civilisation — The Idea of Civilisation and that of Virtue — 
Essential Characteristics of Civilisation — The Terms " Barbarian" and 
"Savage" — Barbarism and Savagery not Primeval — Marriage in 
Primeval Times — The Development of Good and Evil — Natural Rejec- 
tion the Correlative of Natural Selection — Savagery and Civilisation 
both Products of Evolution — Deteriorating Effects of External Con- 
ditions—Origin and Distribution of the Human Race — An Ancient 
and Sublime Cosmogony — Scripture and Science relative to Origin of 
Man — The Doctrine of Chances— The Dispersion of the Human Race 
— The Configuration of the Earth— The Teaching of Geology — Land- 
masses older than Man— The Natives of Tierra del Fuego — Man on 
the Shores of Baffin's Bay — The Eskimo Immigrants from the South — 
Man on the African Continent — The Aborigines of Australasia — The 
Fauna of Australasia — Man not Indigenous in Australasia, but a 
Degenerate Offshoot of the Race — Incentives to Immigration — Remote 
Dispersions Accounted for — Degradation due to External Circum- 
stances — Man in Tropical America— Condition of the Lowest Races 
of Man — Degradation by Development in a Wrong Direction — The 
Indigenous Civilisation of America — A Significant Red Indian Myth — 
Hochelaga — Degradation a Result of War — Reason itself a Cause of 
Degradation — The Gift of Reason — The Lines on which Reason 
moves — Nature of the Reasoning Faculty — Downward Developments 
of Reason — Self-Rectifying Power of Reason in Physics — Reason in 
Religion — Aberrant Developments of Reason in Morals — The Free- 
Will of Man in Virtue and in Vice — Deviation in Man from the Order 
of Nature. 



CHAPTER X. 



On the Degradation of Man 



» 



. 374-447 



• 



xiv Contents. 



CHAPTER XL 

PAGE 

On the Nature and Origin of Religion .. . 448-482 

Correlation of Appetites with certain Facts and Laws — Inquiry into the 
Origin of Religion — Assumptions involved in Current Theories — 
Schleiermacher's Definition of Religion— The Sense of Dependence — 
Tiele's Definition of Religion — Belief in a Personal Deity— Divorce 
of Religion and Worship anomalous— The Denial of God by some 
not a complete Denial — Belief in Order and Law a Belief in Per- 
sonality—Knowledge identified with Religion — Comte's System of 
Religion — Supernatural Belief a Personal Belief — Ambiguity of the 
Phrase, " The Infinite "—"The Invisible," another Abstract Phrase- 
Necessity for a clear Definition of Religion — The Religion of Primeval 
Man— The Mosaic Identification of Origin of Religion and Origin of 
Man — The Fundamental Belief in all Religions— Personal Element 
of Will and of Purpose — Personality in the Agencies and Energies 
of Nature — The Origin of Reason — Of Imagination — Of Wonder — 
The Desire of Knowledge leads to Religious Faith — The Origin of 
all Theologies — The Self-Consciousness of Man connected with Reli- 
gious Emotion and Belief — The Conception of Form and Locality — 
No Race of Men without Conceptions of a Religious Nature — Ten- 
dency to Deify Material Objects — Degenerate Developments, of Forms 
— Difference between the Theology of the Church and Popular Super- 
stitions. 

CHAPTER XII. 
On the Corruptions of Religion . . . 483-519 

Four Stages in the History of Religion — Fetishism — The Theology often 
Superior to the Worship — Superstitious Worship of African Tribes — 
Tyranny of Savage Religious Customs — Processes of Degradation in 
Religion— The "Customs" of Dahomey — The Religion of Ancient 
Egypt— The Origin of Animal Worship — Possible Explanation of the 
Worship of Animals— The Scarabeus Beetle — Degradation of Animal- 
Worship— Serpent-Worship — Comte's Worship of Humanity — Liable 
to Degradation — The Chosen Heroes of Humanity— Religious Systems 
uniformly subject to Degradation — Christianity alone possesses Power 
of Revival and Reform — The Corruption of Mahometanism — 
The Character of Mahomet — Source of Declension of Mahomet- 
anism — Buddhism originally a Reform of Brahminism — The Teaching 
of Sakya Muni (Buddha) — The Doctrine of Transmigration of Souls 
— The Extravagances of Buddhism accounted for — Buddhistic Atheism 
—The Origin of Brahminism— The Heaven-Father — The True Idea 
of the Godhead in Christianity — Negative Definition of the Godhead 
by the Reformers of the English Church— J. H. Newman's Definition 



Contents. 



xv 



— Doubtful Superiority of Modern Ideas of God — Deifications of 
Nature in Vedic Literature — Religious Conceptions of the Aryan 
Race — Personifications of the Forces or Powers of Nature — Mono- 
theism and Polytheism — The Central Idea of Brahminism — Evidence 
of Language regarding Conceptions of Personality — Personifications 
of the Earliest Aryans— The " Book of the Dead "—The Ancient 
Egyptian Idea of God. 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Recapitulations and Conclusions . . . 520-553 

Doubtful Chronology of the Oldest Vedic Literature — The first Inventions 
of Man the most Wonderful — The Beginnings of Human Speech — 
Thought and Language — Inconceivability of a First Man as a Savage 
— Power of Conception no Measure of Possibility — The Assumption of 
a Fatherless Childhood — Inconceivability of a First Man as a Beast — 
Universal Tendency of the Human Mind to Belief in Divinity— Reli- 
gion Unaccountable on the Hypothesis of No-God — Highest Type 
of Virtue founded on Religious Faith — The Enemies of Religion — 
Relation between Religious Conceptions and Highest Conditions of 
Human Life — Fundamental Postulates of ail Religion — The Sense of 
Obedience — Truthfulness of the Senses — Authority of Structural Ad- 
justment — The Principle of the Human Mechanism — The Senses of 
the Mind — The Spirit of Interpretation— Pre-established Harmonies 
certain — Difference between Moral and Intellectual Nature of Man- 
Man's first Consciousness of God — Happy Conditions of Man's first 
Formation — The Elements bom in Man for Apprehending God — 
Idolatry and Fetishism Corruptions of early Conceptions of Spiritual 
Religion — Dante's Claim of Instinct in Man — Human Corruption 
Scientifically Defined — Moral Corruption and the Law of Hereditary 
Transmission — Man's Moral Character the one great Anomaly in 
. Nature — Agnosticism Ignores everything Kindred to Moral and 
Intellectual Structure — The Pretended Solvent of all Knowledge 
and of all Belief. 



Index 



553-571 



THE 



UNITY OF NATURE. 



General Definitions and Illustrations of the 
Unity of Nature — what it is and what it 

IS NOT. 

HP HE System of Nature in which we live im- 



presses itself cn the mind as one System. It 
is under this impression that we speak of it as the 
Universe. It was under the same impression, but 
with a conception specially vivid of its order and its 
beauty, that the Greeks called it the Kosmos. By 
such words as these, we mean that Nature is one 
Whole — a Whole of which all the parts are inse- 
parably united — joined together by the most curious 
and intimate relations, which it is the highest work of 
Observation to trace, and of Reason to understand. 

I do not suppose that there is any need of prov- 
ing this — of proving, I mean, that this is the general 
impression which Nature makes upon us. It may 
be well, however, to trace this impression to its 



CHAPTER I. 




A 



The Unity of Nature. 



source — to see how far it is founded on definite facts., 
and how far it is strengthened bv such new disco- 
veries as science has lately added to the knowledge 
of Mankind. 

One thino; is certain : that whatever science mav 
have done., or may be doing, to confirm Man's idea 
of the Unity of Nature, science, in the modern accep- 
tation of the term, did not give rise to it. The idea 
had arisen long before science in this sense was born. 
That is to say, the idea existed before the acquisition 
of physical knowledge had been raised to the dignity 
of a pursuit, and before the methods and the results 
of that pursuit had been reduced to system. Theo- 
logy, no doubt, had more to do with it. The idea 
of the Unity of Nature must be at least as old as the 
idea of one God : and even those who believe in the 
derivation of Man from the Savage and the Brute, 
cannot tell us how soon the Monotheistic doctrine 
arose. The Jewish literature and traditions, which 
are at least among the oldest in the world, exhibit 
this doctrine in the purest form, and represent it 
as the doctrine of primeval times. The earliest 
indications of religious thought among" the Arvan 
races pomt in the same direction. The records of 
that mysterious civilisation which had been estab- 
lished on the Nile at a date long anterior to the 
Call of Abraham, are more and more clearly yielding 
results in harmony with the tradition of the Jews. 



And the Unity of God. 



The Polytheism of Egypt is being traced and 
tracked through the many and the easy paths which 
lead to the fashioning of many Gods out of the attri- 
butes of One.* 

Probably those who do not accept this conclusion 
as historically proved may hold rather that the idea 
of the Unity of Nature preceded the idea of the 
Unity of God. and that Monotheism is but the form 
in which that earlier idea became embodied. It 
matters not, so far as my present purpose is con- 
cerned, which of these two has been the real order 
of events. If the law prevailing in the infancy of 
our race has been at all like the law prevailing in 
the infancy of the individual, then Man's first Beliefs 
were derived from Authority, and not from either 
reasoning or observation. I do not mvself believe 
that in the morning of the world Theism arose as the 
result of philosophical speculation, or as the result of 
Imagination personifying- some abstract idea of the 
Unity of external Nature. But if this were possible, 
then it would follow that while a perception of the 
Unity of Nature must be at least as old as the idea of 
one Creator, it may be a good deal older. Whether 
the two ideas were ever actually separated in history, 
it is certain that they can be, and are separated at 
the present time. A sense and a perception of the 
Unity of Nature — strong, imaginative, and almost 

* Renouf, " Hibbert Lectures."'' 1S79. p. 89. 



4 



T/ie Unity of Nature. 



mystic in its character — is now prevalent among* 
men over whom the idea of the personal agency of a 
living God has, to say the least, a much weaker hold. 
V What, then, is this Unity of Nature ? Is it a fact 
or an imagination ? Is it a reality or a dream ? Is 
it a mere poetic fancy incapable of definition ; or is 
it a conception firmly and legitimately founded on 
the phenomena of the world ? 

But there is another question which comes before 
these. What do we mean by unity ? In what sense 
can we say that an infinite number and variety of 
things are nevertheless one ? This is an important 
question, because it is very possible to look for the 
Unity of Nature in such a manner that, instead of 
extending our knowledge, or rendering it more clear 
and definite, we may rather narrow it, and render it 
more confused. It has been said that all knowledge 
consists in the perception of difference. This is not 
accurate : but it is true that the perception of dif- 
ference is the necessary foundation of all knowledge. 
For if it be possible to give any short definition 
of that in which essentially all knowledge consists, 
perhaps the nearest approach to such a definition 
would be this : that knowledge is the perception of 
relations. To know a thing and to understand it, 
is to know it in its relation to other things. But 
the first step in this knowledge is to know it as 
distinguished from other things. The perception of 



Distinctions in Nature not to be Confounded. 5 

mere difference comes before the perception of all 
other and higher relations. 

It is well, therefore, to remember that no increase 
of knowledge can be acquired by a wilful confound- 
ing or a careless forgetfulness of distinctions. We 
may choose to call two things one, because we choose 
to look at them in one aspect only, and to disregard 
them in other aspects quite as obvious, and perhaps 
much more important. And thus we may create a 
unity which is purely artificial, or which represents 
nothing but a comparatively insignificant incident in 
the System of Nature. For as things may be related 
to each other in an infinite variety of ways — in 
form, or in size, or in substance, or in position, or in 
modes of origin, or in laws of growth, or in work 
and function — so there are an infinite number and 
variety of aspects in which unity can be traced. And 
these aspects rise in an ascending series according 
to the completeness of our knowledge of things, and 
according to the development of those intellectual 
faculties by which alone the higher relations between 
them can be perceived. For the perception of every 
relation, even that of mere physical continuity, is 
purely the work of Mind, and this work can only be 
performed in proportion to the materials which are 
supplied, and to the power of interpretation which is 
enjoyed. It is very easy to rest satisfied with the per- 
ception of the commoner and more obvious relations 



6 



The Unity of Nature 



of things to each other, and even to be so engrossed 
with these as to be rendered altogether incap- 
able of perceiving the finer and less palpable re- 
lations which constitute the higher aspects of the 
Unity of Nature. New relations, too, which are by 
no means obvious, but on the contrary can only be 
discovered by laborious analysis, may from the mere 
effect of novelty, engross attention far beyond their 
real importance. Nay, more — it may be said, with 
truth, that this is a danger which, for a time at least, 
increases with the progress of science, because it 
must obviously beset special subjects of inquiry and 
special methods of research. The division of labour 
necessarily becomes more and more minute with the 
complication of the work which is to be done, and 
branches out into a thousand channels of inquiry, 
each of which finds its natural termination in the 
ascertainment of some one special series of relations. 
The Chemist is engaged with the elementary com- 
binations of matter, and finds a unity of composition 
among things which in all other aspects are totally 
diverse. The Anatomist is concerned with structure, 
and separates widely between things which may 
nevertheless be identical in chemical composition. 
The Physiologist is concerned with function ; and,, 
finding the same offices performed by a vast variety 
of structures, ranges them across all their differences 
under a single name. The Comparative Anatomist; 



Danger of forming Inadequate Conceptions. 7 



is concerned with the relative place or position of 
the parts in Organic structures ; and, although he 
finds the same part in different creatures perform- 
ing widely different functions, he nevertheless pro- 
nounces them to be the same, and to be one in the 
homologies of an ideal archetype. But each of these 
inquirers may be satisfied with the particular unity 
which his own investigations lead him specially to 
observe, and mav be blind altogether to the unity 
which is next above it. 

Nor is it specialists alone who are in danger of 
forming narrow and inadequate conceptions of the 
Unity of Nature. Minds whose tendency it is to 
generalise are even more exposed to this danger 
than minds whose passion it is to investigate and 
arrange a particular class of facts. The work of 
generalisation is essentially a work of selection — the 
selection and separation of that which is essential 
from that which is comparatively unimportant, in 
the great connecting lines of Nature. If in this 
work the principle of selection be a wrong one — if 
it be founded on a narrow conception and a very 
partial understanding of the facts — if the great lines, 
are not seen to be what they really are, and if little 
divergent lines are followed in their stead — then 
the most ambitious generalisations of science may- 
be far more deceiving than the most despised of 
vulgar errors. For indeed these errors are some- 
times errors only in their form, whilst in substance 



The Unity of Nature. 



they are often full of spirit and of truth. In them, 
not seldom, the popular eye has caught and reflected 
the masses of the forest, which the man of science has 
been prevented from seeing by the trees. And so it 
may well be that the sense of unity in Nature, which 
Man has had from very early times, reflected in 
such words as the " Universe/' and in his belief 
in one God, is a higher and fuller perception of the 
truth than is commonly attained either by those who 
are engrossed in the laborious investigation of de- 
tails, or by those who struggle to compress all the 
wealth of Nature within some abstract formula of 
the laboratory or of the workshop. This is one of 
the many cases in which the Intuitions of the Mind 
have preceded inquiry, and gone in advance of 
science, leaving nothing for systematic investiga- 
tion to do, except to confirm, by formal proofs, that 
which has been already long felt and known. 

I have already indicated the sense in which the 
Unity of Nature impresses itself on the Intelligence 
of Man. It is in that intricate dependence of all 
things upon each other which makes them appear to 
' be parts of one System. And even where the con- 
nection falls short of dependence, or of any visible 
relation, the same impression of unity is conveyed 
in the prevalence of close and curious analogies 
which are not the less striking when the cause or 
the reason of them is unknown. 

I propose in this chapter to specify some of 



Unity in the Universality of Gravitation. 9 



the signs of unity which the study of Nature has 
more definitely revealed, and consider how far they 
carry us. 

There is one sign of unity, which, of itself, carries 
us very far indeed. It is the sign given to us in the 
ties by which this world of ours is bound to the other 
worlds around it. There is no room for fancy here. 
The truths which have been reached in this matter 
have been reached by walking in the paths of rigo- 
rous demonstration. This Earth is part of the vast 
Mechanism of the Heavens. The force, or forces, by 
which that mechanism is governed are forces which 
prevail not only in our own Solar System, but, as 
there is reason to believe, through all Space, and are 
determining, as astronomers tell us, the movement 
of our Sun, with all its Planets, round some distant 
centre, of which we know neither the nature nor the 
place. Moreover, these same forces are equally pre- 
vailing on the surface of this Earth itself. The whole 
of its physical phenomena are subject to the condi- 
tions which they impose. 

If there were no other indications of unity than 
this, it would be almost enough. For the unity 
which is implied in the Mechanism of the Heavens 
is indeed a unity which is all-embracing and com- 
plete. The structure of our own Bodies, with all 
that depends upon it, is a structure governed by, 
and therefore adapted to, the same force of gravita- 



IO 



The Unity of Nature. 



tion which has determined the form and the move- 
ments of myriads of worlds. Every part of the 
human Organism is fitted to conditions which would 
all be destroyed in a moment if the forces of gravita- 
tion were to change or fail. It is, indeed, evident 
that a force such as this must govern the whole 
order of things in which it exists at all. Every 
other force must work, or be worked, in subordina- 
tion to it. 

Nor is gravitation the only agency which brings 
home to us the unity of the conditions which pre- 
vail among the worlds. There is another : Light — 
that sweet and heavenly messenger which comes to 
us from the depths of Space, telling us all we know 
of other worlds, and giving us all that we enjoy 
of life and beauty on our own. And there is one 
condition of unity revealed by Light which is not 
revealed by gravitation. For, in respect to gravita- 
tion, although we have an idea of the measure, we 
have no idea of the method, of its operation. We 
know with precision the numerical rules which it 
obeys, but we know nothing whatever of the way 
in which its work is done. But in respect to Light 
we have an idea not only of the measure, but of the 
mode of its operation. In one sense, of course, 
Light is a mere sensation in ourselves. But when 
we speak of it as an external thing, we speak of 
the cause of that sensation. In this sense, Light 



Fact of a Universal Ether. 



1 1 



is a wave, or an undulatory vibration, and such 
vibrations can only be propagated in a medium 
which, however thin, must be material. [That this 
substance is at all like the chemical substance that 
we call " ether," is of course a metaphor. It is a 
good metaphor only in so far as the vapour of ether 
represents to us a form of Matter which is very thin, 
invisible, and impalpable. But although the appli- 
cation of this word to the medium in which Lio-ht 

o 

is propagated is a metaphor, it is wholly erroneous 
to say, as is often said, that the existence of the 
medium is an hypothesis^; The existence of some 
medium is as certain as any other fact in physics. 
A vibration, or an undulation, has no meaning except 
that of a movement in the particles of a material sub- 
stance. Those who have disputed or doubted the use 
of the word "ether" as involving an hypothesis have 
been obliged to admit of a material medium in some 
form or other. Light, therefore, reveals to us the fact 
that we are united with the most distant worlds, and 
with all intervening space, by some ethereal atmos- 
phere, which embraces and holds them all. 

Moreover, the enormous velocity with which 
the vibrations of this atmosphere are propagated 
proves that it is a substance of the closest con- 
tinuity, and of the highest tension. The tremors 
which are imparted to it by luminous bodies rush 
from particle to particle at the rate of i86,oco miles 



12 



The Unity of Nature. 



in a second of time; and thus, although it is im- 
palpable, invisible, and imponderable, we know 
that it is a medium infinitely more compact than the 
most solid substances which can be felt and weighed. 
It is very difficult to conceive this, because the 
waves or tremors which constitute Light are not 
recognisable by any sense but one ; and the im- 
pressions of that sense give us no direct information 
on the nature of the medium by which those im- 
pressions are produced. We cannot see the lumi- 
niferous medium except when it is in motion; and 
not even then, unless that motion be in a certain 
direction towards ourselves. When this medium 
is at rest we are in utter darkness, and so are 
we also when its movements- are rushing past 
us, but do not directly impinge upon us. The 
luminiferous medium is, therefore, in itself, invisible ; 
and its nature can only be arrived at by pure reason- 
ing — reasoning, of course, founded on observation, 
but observation of rare phenomena, or of phenomena 
which can only" be seen under those conditions 
which Man has invented for analysing the opera- 
tions of his own most glorious Sense. And never, 
perhaps, has Mans inventive genius been more sig- 
nally displayed than in the long series of investiga- 
tions which first led up to the conception, and have 
now furnished the proof, that Light is nothing but 
the undulatory movement of a substantial medium., 



Nature of the Universal Ether. 13 

It is very difficult to express in language the 
ideas upon the nature of that medium which have 
been built up from the facts of its behaviour. It is 
difficult to do so, because all the words by which 
we express the properties of . Matter refer to its 
more obvious phenomena — that is. to say, to the 
direct impressions which Matter makes upon the 
senses. And so, when we have to deal with forms 
of Matter which do not make any impressions of 
the same kind — forms of Matter which can neither 
be seen, nor felt, nor handled, which have neither 
weight, nor taste, nor smell, nor aspect — we can 
only describe them by the help of analogies as near 
as we can find. But as regards the qualities of the 
medium which causes the sensation of Light, the 
nearest analogies are remote, and what is worse, 
they compel us to associate ideas which elsewhere 
are so dissevered as to appear almost exclusive of 
each other. It is now more than three quarters of 
a century since Dr. Thomas Young astonished and 
amused the* scientific world by declaring of the 
luminiferous medium that he "was disposed to believe 
that it pervades the substance of all material bodies 
with little or no resistance as freely as the air moves 
through a grove of trees/'* This suggests the idea 
of an element of extreme tenuity. And yet that 

* Works of Dr. Young, vol. i. p. 188. Bakerian Lecture, Nov. 24, 
1803. 



The Unity of Nature. 



element cannot be said to be thin in which a wave is 
transmitted with the enormous velocity of Light. On 
the contrary, its molecules must be in closest contact 
with each other when a tremor is carried by them 
through a thickness of 186,000 miles in a single 
second. Accordingly, Sir J. Herschel has declared 
that the luminiferous ether must be conceived of 
not as an air, nor as a fluid, but rather as a solid — 
"in this sense at least, that its particles cannot be 
supposed as capable of interchanging places, or of 
bodily transfer to any measurable distance from their 
own special and assigned localities in the universe.""" 
Well may Sir J. Herschel add that <c this will go far 
to realize (in however unexpected a form) the ancient 
idea of a crystalline orb." And thus the wonderful 
result of all investigation is that this Earth is in 
actual rigid contact with the most distant worlds in 
space — in rigid contact, that is to say, through a 
medium which touches and envelopes all, and which 
is incessantly communicating from one world to 
another the minutest vibrations it receives. 

The laws, therefore, and the constitution of Light, 
even more than the law of gravitation, carry up to 
the highest degree of certainty our conception of the 
Universe as one ; — one, that is to say, in virtue of 
the closest mechanical connection, and of the pre- 
valence of one universal medium. 

* " Familiar Lectures on Scientific Subjects," p. 285. 



Ether the Vehicle of other Forces. 



15 



Moreover, it is now known that this medium is 
the vehicle not only of Light, but also of Radiant 
Heat, whilst it has likewise a special power of set- 
ting up, or of setting free, the mysterious action 
of Chemical Affinity. The beautiful experiments 
have become familiar by which these three kinds 
of energy can be separated from each other in the 
solar spectrum, and each of them can be made to 
exhibit its peculiar effects. With these again the 
forces of Galvanism and Electricity have some very 
intimate connection, which goes far to indicate like 
methods of operation in some prevailing element. 
Considering how all the forms of Matter, both in 
the Organic and in the Inorganic worlds, depend on 
one or other, or on all of these — considering how 
Life itself depends upon them, and how it flickers 
or expires according as they are present in due 
proportion — it is impossible not to feel that in this 
great group of powers, so closely bound up together, 
we are standing very close indeed to some per- 
vading, if not universal, agency in the mechanism 
of Nature. 

There are, however, a great many things in 
Nature to which we may stand very close indeed 
without being able to see them clearly, or to under- 
stand them at all. And this is the case with that 
great Pentarchy of Physical Forces which is consti- 
tuted by Heat, Light, Magnetism, Electricity, and 



16 



The Unity of Nature, 



Chemical Affinity. The relations between them are 
as intimate as they are obscure. But the nature of 
those relations, in so far as they are known, is pre- 
eminently suggestive of a unity which is founded 
on the co-ordination of agencies not in themselves 
identical, but, on the contrary, separated from each 
other by distinctions as profound as any which can 
prevail in physics. Writers and lecturers on Science 
are very apt to speak of these Forces as capable 
of being "transmuted" or " converted " into each 
other. But this is a loose and inaccurate represen- 
tation of the facts. Carbon can be converted or 
transmuted into a diamond under certain conditions 
by a process which, so far as we know, adds no- 
thing to it, and takes nothing from it. Under both 
aspects it is the same substance with no element 
subtracted, and no new element introduced. It has 
simply had its structure altered by a rearrangement 
of its particles. But no such identity can be asserted 
of the five great Physical Forces of which we are 
speaking now. It is true, indeed, that each of them 
seems sometimes to pass into the other, but only 
as one thing may be said to pass into another 
wheri that other is produced by its antecedent. 
Mechanical motion in the form of a blow struck 
against living flesh will inflict upon that flesh a 
wound. But it would hardly be correct to say that 
the motion of the blow is transmuted into extrava- 



The So-called Transmutation of Forces. 1 7 



sated blood. In like manner when a skilful Savage 
twirls one dry stick upon another in a particular 
manner, he produces by the motion fire. But it 
would be an erroneous description of the fact to say 
that the muscular strength of the Savage is trans- 
muted into flame. 

Yet this, or something like this, is the nature of 
the sequence between the Physical Forces which is 
commonly described as transmutation. In all these 
cases there are incidents necessary to the effect 
which are due to other elements than are to be 
found in the apparently producing cause. There is 
this peculiarity, however, in the connection between 
the Physical Forces— that they may all interchange- 
ably be either the cause or the consequence of each 
other. Mechanical Motion is the most common ante- 
cedent of them ail. It will give rise to Light and 
Heat, whilst Heat and. Light will both give rise to 
mechanical Motion. In like manner Heat and Lisfht 
will give rise to Electricity, whilst, conversely, 
Electricity will give rise to Heat and Light. Again, 
Electricity will give rise to Magnetism, and Mag- 
netism, when accompanied — but only when accom- 
panied — -by mechanical movement, will generate 
powerful currents of Electricity. These currents^ 
again, are so closely connected with Chemical Force: 
that they are the most powerful of all agents in setting 
that Force free to exert its selective energy. So 



1 8 



The Unity of Nature. 



intimate is this connection that Electricity has been 
described as Chemical Force in motion — passing 
from one point of action to another through a chain 
of intervening substances. And yet the identification 
of Voltaic Electricity with Chemical Force eludes us 
again when it is considered that in itself it has no 
chemical effect (so far as is known) on the matter 
through which it passes by conduction. The wires 
which complete the circuit in a Voltaic battery suffer 
no decomposition or chemical change, although such 
a change is the origin of the current at one end, and 
is again the result of it at the other end. Chemical 
action will not arise except under special conditions. 
But when these conditions are present it will produce 
all the "correlated" forces, Heat, Light, Magnetism, 
and Electricity, whilst, conversely, all these forces 
either produce or stimulate or intensify Chemical 
Action. 

This great cycle of Forces, therefore, constitutes, 
as it were, an endless chain, every link of which 
is in one sense separate from, and in another sense 
is united to, the rest. Each, regarded by itself, is 
distinguished by important differences from the 
others. The mechanical motion of a cannon-ball is 
a very different thing from the molecular vibration 
which it produces when that motion is stopped by a 
resisting body. Magnetism is very different from 
Electricity, inasmuch as in itself Magnetism is 



Possible Ultimate Connection among the Forces. 19 



statical, whereas Electricity is active. Magnetism, 
too, differs from other forms of Force in the great dis- 
tinguishing feature of polarity, — so that every body 
which is magnetic is the seat of a dual force acting 
in opposite directions with equal energy. Moreover, 
this duality of direction in the action of Magnetic 
Force is inherent in every particle of the body, so 
that the minutest fragment of it manifests the same 
oppositeness as the whole mass. Chemical Affinity 
as the most mysterious of all the Physical Forces, — 
that of which it is most difficult to form any clear 
conception. But one characteristic of this Force is 
that it depends on difference or heterogeneousness 
in the composition of the matter which it affects. 
What the ultimate connection really is which exists 
between Forces in other respects so separate or 
distinct, is as yet one of the mysteries of science. 
Suspicion, if it be nothing more — that kind of 
surmise which in physical investigations has so 
often preceded discovery — points to that mysterious 
medium which from its most obvious function has 
been called the luminiferous ether. If movements 
in that medium constitute all that we know of one 
or two of the correlated Forces, it seems more than 
probable that it is at least an essential element in 
them all. 

This close connection of so many various pheno- 
mena with different kinds of movement in a single 
medium is by far the most striking and instructive 



20 The Unity of Natter e. 



speculation of modern science. It supplies to some 
extent a solid physical basis, and one veritable 
cause for part, at least, of the general impression of 
unity which the aspects of Nature leave upon the 
mind. For all work done by the same implement 
generally carries the mark of that implement, as it 
were of a tool, upon it. Things made of the same 
material, whatever they may be, are sure to be like 
in those characteristics which result from identical 
or from similar properties and modes of action. And 
so far, therefore, it is easy to understand the con- 
stant and close analogies which prevail in that 
vast circle of phenomena which are connected with 
Heat, Light, Electricity, Magnetism, and Chemical 
Affinity. 

But although the employment of one and the 
same agency in the production of a variety of effects 
is, no doubt, one cause of the visible unity which 
prevails in Nature, it is not the only cause. The 
same close analogies exist where no such identity 
of agency can be traced. Thus the mode in which 
the atmosphere carries Sound is closely analogous 
to the mode in which the luminiferous medium carries 
Light. But this medium and the atmosphere are 
two very different agents, and the similarity of the 
laws which the undulations of both obey is due to 
some other and some more general cause of unity 
than identitv of material. This more general cause 



A Higher Unity than Physical Required. 2 r 

is to be found, no doubt, in one common law which 
determines the forms of motion in all Matter, and 
especially in highly elastic media. 

But, indeed, the mere physical or mechanical unity 
which consists in the action of one great vehicle of 
power, even if this were more universally prevalent 
than it is known to be, is but the lowest step in the 
long ascent which carries us up to a unity of a more 
perfect kind. The means by which some one single 
implement can be made to work a thousand different 
effects, not only without interference, and without 
confusion, but with such relations between it and 
other agents as to lead to complete harmonies of 
result, are means which point to some unity behind 
and above the implement itself — that is to say, they 
point to some unity in the method of its handling, 
in the management of the impulses which, receiving, 
it conveys, and in the arrangement of the materials 
on which it operates. 

No illustration can be given of this higher kind 
of unity which is half so striking as the illustration 
which is afforded by the astonishing facts now 
familiar as to the composition of Solar Light. When 
we consider that every colour in the Spectrum repre- 
sents the motion of a separate wave or ripple, and 
that in addition to the visible series there are other 
series, one at each end of the luminous rays, which 
are non-luminous, and therefore invisible — all of 



22 



The Unity of Nature. 



which consist of waves equally distinct ; when we 
consider farther that all these are carried simul- 
taneously with the same speed across millions of 
miles ; that they are separable, and yet are never 
separated ; that they move accurately together, with- 
out jostling or confusion, in perfect combination, yet 
so that each shall be capable of producing its own 
separate effect — it altogether transcends our faculties 
of imagination to conceive how movements of such 
infinite complication can be united in one such- 
perfect order. 

And be it observed that the difficulty of conceiving 
this is not diminished, but increased, by the fact that 
these movements are propagated in a single medium ; 
because it is most difficult to conceive how the par- 
ticles of the medium can be so arranged as to be 
capable of conveying so many different kinds of 
motion with equal velocities and at the same instant 
of time. It is clear that the unity of effect which is 
achieved out of this immense variety of movements 
is a unity which lies altogether behind the mere unity 
of material, and is traceable to some one order of 
arrangement under which the original impulses are 
conveyed. We know that in respect to the waves of 
Sound, the production of perfect harmonies among 
them can only be attained by a skilful adjustment of 
the instruments, whose vibrations are the cause and 
the measure of the aerial waves which, in their 



Infinite Unity of Adjustment Involved. 23 



combination, constitute perfect music. And so, in 
like manner, we may be sure that the harmonies of 
the Spectrum, effected as they are amongst an infinite 
number and variety of motions very easily capable 
of separation and disturbance, must be the result 
of some close adjustment between the constituent 
element of the conveying medium and the constituent 
elements of the luminous bodies whose complex, 
but joint, vibrations constitute that embodied Har- 
mony which we know as Light. Moreover, as this 
adjustment must be close and intimate between the 
properties of the ether and the nature of the radiat- 
ing bodies whose vibrations it repeats, so also must 
the same adjustment be equally close between these 
vibrations and the properties of Matter — both the 
living and the not -living — on which they exert such 
a powerful influence. And when we consider the 
number and the nature of the things which this 

o 

adjustment must include — how it embraces the 
whole Organic and the whole Inorganic world, and 
every combination of the two — we can, perhaps, form 
some idea of what a bond and bridge it is between 
the most stupendous phenomena of the Heavens and 
the minutest phenomena of Earth. For this adjust- 
ment must be perfect between these several things — 
first, the flaming elements in the Sun which commu- 
nicate the different vibrations in definite proportion ^ 
next, the constitution of the medium, which is capable 



24 



The Unity of Nature. 



of conveying them without division, confusion, or 
obstruction ; next, the constitution of our own atmo- 
sphere, so that neither shall it distort, nor confuse, 
nor quench the waves ; and lastly, the constitution 
of those forms of Matter upon Earth which respond, 
each after its own laws, to the stimulus it is so made 
as to receive from the heating, lighting, and chemi- 
cal undulations. 

In contemplating this vast System of Adjustment, 
it is important to analyse and define, so far as we 
can, the impression of unity which it makes upon us; 
because the real scope and source of this impression 
may very easily be mistaken. It has been already 
pointed out that we can only see likeness by first 
seeing difference, and that the full perception of that 
in which things are unlike is essential to an accurate 

o 

appreciation of that in which they are the same. 
The classifying instinct must be strong- in the human 
mind, from the delight it finds in reducing diverse 
things to some one common definition. And this 
instinct is founded on the power of setting differences 
aside, and of fixing our attention on some selected 
conditions of resemblance. But we must remember 
that it depends on our width and depth of vision 
whether the unities which we thus select in Nature 
are the smallest and the most incidental, or whether 
they are the largest and the most significant And, 
indeed, for some temporary purposes — as, for 



Accepted Distinction betwee7i Light and Heat. 25 

example, to make clear to our minds the exact 
nature of the facts which science may have ascer- 
tained — it may be necessary to classify together as 
coming under one and the same category, things as 
different from each other as light from darkness. 
Nor is this any extreme or imaginary case. It is a 
case actually exemplified in a lecture by Professor 
Tyndall, which is entitled " The Identity of Light 
and Heat." Yet those who have attended the ex- 
positions of that eminent physical philosopher must 
be familiar with the beautiful experiments which 
show how distinct in another aspect are Light and 
Heat; how easily and how perfectly they can be 
separated from each other ; how certain substances 
obstruct the one and let through the other ; and how 
the fiercest heat can be raging in the profoundest 
darkness. Nevertheless, there is more than one 
mental aspect, — there is more than one method of 
conception, — in terms of which these two separable 
powers can be brought under one description. Light 
and Heat, however different in their effects — how- 
ever distinct and separable from each other — can 
both be regarded as " Forms of Motion" among the 
particles of Matter. Moreover, it can be shown that 
both are conveyed or caused by waves, or undulatory 
vibrations in one and the same ethereal medium. 
And the same definition applies to the most active 



26 



The Unity of Nature. 



chemical rays, which again are separable and distinct 
from the rays both of Light and Heat. 

But although this definition may be correct as far 
as it goes, it is a definition nevertheless which slurs 
over and keeps out of sight distinctions of a fun- 
damental character. In the first place, it takes no 
notice of the absolute distinction between Light or 
Heat considered as sensations of our Organism or 
as states of consciousness, and Light or Heat con- 
sidered as the external agencies which produce 
these sensations in us. Sir W. Grove has expressed 
a doubt whether it is legitimate to apply the word 
" Light " at all to any rays which do not excite the 
sense of vision. This, however, is not the dis- 
tinction to which I now refer as confounded when 
Light is identified with Heat. The confusion to 
which Sir W. Grove objects between visible and 
invisible rays is a confusion of language only. He 
puts that confusion clearly when he says, " Invisible 
light is darkness, and if it exist then is darkness 
light." * If it be an ascertained fact, or if it be 
the only view consistent with our present know- 
ledge, that the ethereal pulsations which do, and 
those which do not, excite in us the sense of vision, 
are pulsations exactly of the same kind and in 
exactly the same medium, and that they differ in 
nothing but in periods of time or length of wave, so 

* " Correlation and Continuity of the Physical Forces," p. 30, ed. 1874. 



Radical Distinction between L ight and Heat, 2 7 



that our seeing of them or our not seeing of them 
depends on nothing but the focussing, as it were, of 
our eyes, then the inclusion of them under the same 
word Light involves no confusion of thought. We 
should confound no distinction of importance, for 
example, by applying the same name to grains of 
sand which are large enough to be visible, and to 
those which are so minute as to be wholly invisible 
even to the microscope. And if a distinction of this 
nature — a mere distinction of size, or of velocity, or 
of form of motion, were the only distinction between 
Light and Heat — it might be legitimate to consider 
them as identical, and to call them by the same name. 
But the truth is that there are distinctions between 
them of quite another kind. Light, in the abstract 
conception of it, consists in undulatory vibrations in 
the pure ether, and in these alone. They may or 
may not be visible — that is to say, they may or may 
not be within the range of our Organs of vision, just 
as a sound may or may not be too faint and low, or 
too fine and high, to be audible to our ears. But 
the word " Heat " carries quite a different meaning, 
and the conception it conveys could not be covered 
under the same definition as that which covers Light. 
Heat is inseparably associated in our minds with, 
and does essentially consist in, certain motions, not 
of pure ether, but of the molecules of solid or pon- 
derable matter. These motions in solid or ponder- 



2S 



The Unity of Nature. 



able matter are net in any sense identical with the 
undulatory motions of pure ether which constitute 
Light. Consequently, when physicists rind themselves 
under the necessity of denning more closely what 
they mean by the identity of Heat and Light, they 
are obliged to separate between two different kinds 
of Heat — that is to say. between two wholly different 
things, both covered under the common name of 
Heat — one of which is really identical in kind with 
Light, and the other of which is not. " Radiant " 
Heat is the kind, and the only kind of Heat, which 
comes under the common definition. "Radiant" 
Heat consists in the undulatory vibrations of pure 
ether which are set up or caused by those other 
vibrations in solid substances or ponderable matter, 
which are Heat more properly so called. Hot bodies 
communicate to the surrounding ethereal medium 
vibrations of the same kind with Light, some of these 
being, and others not being, luminous to our eyes. 
Thus we see that the unity or close relationship 
widen exists between Heat and Light is not a unity 
of sameness or identity, but a unity which depends 
upon and consists in correspondences between things 
in themselves different. It has been suo-c^ested * that 
the facts of Nature would be much more clearly 
represented in language if the old word "Caloric" 

* By Sir W. Thomson. Profess :r Balfour Ste-.var: calls i: " absorbed 
heat'' — " to distinguish i: from raciar.t heat, which is a very different 
thing ■ (" Conservation of Energy/- p. So). 



Relations between Light and Heat. 29 



were revived, in order to distinguish one of the two 
very different things which are now confounded 
under the common term "Heat" — that is to say, 
Heat considered as molecular vibration in solid or 
ponderable matter, and Heat considered as the un- 
dulatory vibrations of pure ether which constitute 
the "Heat"' called "radiant." Adopting this sug- 
gestion, the relation between Light and Heat, as 
these relations are now known to science, may be 
thrown into the following propositions, which are 
framed for the purpose of exhibiting distinctions not 
commonly kept in view : 

I. Certain undulatory vibrations m pure ether 
alone are Light, either (1) visible, or (2) invisible. 

II. These undulatory vibrations in pure ether 
alone are not Caloric 

III. No motions of any kind in pure ether alone 
are Caloric. 

IV. Caloric consists in certain vibratory motions 
in the molecules of ponderable matter or substances 
grosser than the ether, and these motions are not 
undulatory. 

V. The motions in ponderable matter which con- 
stitute Caloric set up or propagate in pure ether the 
undulatory vibrations which constitute Light. 

VI. Conversely, the undulatory vibrations in 
pure ether which constitute Light set up or pro- 



30 The Unity of Nature. 



pagate in grosser matter the motions which are 
Caloric. 

VII. But the motions in pure ether which are 
Light cannot set up or propagate in all ponder- 
able matter equally the motions which are Caloric. 
Transparent substances allow the ethereal undula- 
tions to pass through them with very little Caloric 
motion being set up thereby ; and if there were any 
substance perfectly transparent, no Caloric motion 
would be produced at all. 

VIII. Caloric motions in ponderable matter can 
be and are set up or propagated by other agencies 
than the undulations of ether, as by friction, percus- 
sion, &c. 

IX. Caloric, therefore, differs from Light in 
being (i) motion in a different medium' or in a dif- 
ferent kind of matter ; (2) in being a different kind 
of motion ; (3) in being producible without, so far as 
known, the agency of Light at all. I say " so far as 
known," because as the luminiferous ether is ubiqui- 
tous, or as, at least, its absence cannot anywhere be 
assumed, it is possible that in the calorific effects of 
percussion, friction, &c, undulations of the ether 
may be always an essential condition of the produc- 
tion of Caloric. 

It follows from these propositions that there are 
essential distinctions between Light and Heat, and 



The Chemical Effects of Light. 31 



that the effect of luminiferous undulations or 
" Radiant" Heat in producing Caloric in ponderable 
matter depends entirely upon, and varies greatly in 
accordance with, the constitution or structure of the 
substances through which it passes, or upon which 
it plays. 

The same fundamental distinction applies to those 
ethereal undulations which produce the effects called 
Chemical. No such effects can be produced upon 
substances except according to their special structure 
and properties. Their effect, for example, upon 
living matter is absolutely different from the effect 
they produce upon matter which does not possess 
Vitality. The forces which give rise to Chemical 
Affinity are wholly unknown. And so are those 
which give rise to the peculiar phenomena of living 
matter. The rays which are called Chemical may 
have no other part in the result than that of 
setting free the molecules to be acted upon by the 
distinct and separate forces which are the real sources 
of Chemical Affinity. 

What, then, have we gained when we have grouped 
together, under one common definition, such a variety 
of movements and such a variety of corresponding 
effects ? This is not the kind of unity which we see 
and feel in the vast system of adjustments between 
the Sun, the medium conveying its vibrations and 
the effect of these on all the phenomena of Earth. 



32 



The Unity of Nature, 



The Idnd of unity which is impressed upon us is 
neither that of a mere unity of material nor of 
identity in the forms of motion. On the contrary, 
this kind of unity among things so diverse in all 
other aspects is a bare intellectual apprehension, 
only reached as the result of difficult research, and 
standing in no natural connection with our ordinary 
apprehension of physical truth. For our conception 
of the Energies with which we have to deal in Nature 
must be moulded on our knowledge of what they do, 
far more than on any abstract definition of what they 
are ; or rather, perhaps, it would be more correct to 
say that our conception of what things are can only 
be complete in proportion as we take into our view 
the effects which they produce upon other things 
around them, and especially upon ourselves, through 
the Organs by which we are in contact with the 
external world. If in these effects any two agencies 
are not the same — if they are not even alike — if, 
perhaps, they are the very antithesis of each other — 
then the classification which identifies them, however 
correct it may be, as far as it goes, must omit some 
characteristics which are much more essential than 
those which it includes. The most hideous discords 
which can assail the ear, and the divinest strains of 
the most heavenly music, can be regarded as identical 
in being both a series of sonorous waves. But the 
thought, the preparation, the concerted design — in 
short, the unity of Mind and of Sentiment, on which 



Higher Unities Obscured in Physical. 



the production of musical harmony depends, and 
which it again conveys with matchless power of 
expression to other minds — all this higher unity is 
concealed and lost if we do not rise above the mere 
mechanical definition under which discords and har- 
monies can nevertheless be in this way correctly 
classed together. 

And -yet so pleased are we with discoveries of 
this kind, which reduce, under a common method 
of conception, things which we have been accus- 
tomed to regard as widely different, that we are apt 
to be filled with conceit about such definitions, as if 
we had reached in them some great ultimate truth 
on the nature of things, and as if the old aspects in 
which we have been accustomed to regard them were 
by comparison almost deceptive ; whereas, in reality, 
the higher truth may well have been that which we 
have always known, and the lower truth that which 
we have recently discovered. The knowledge that 
Light and Heat are separable, that they do not 
always accompany each other, is a truer and juster 
conception of the relation in which they stand to us, 
and to all that we see around us, than the knowledge 
that they are both the same in respect of their being 
both " modes of motion." To know the work which 
a machine does is a fuller and higher knowledge 
than to know the nature of the materials of which 

its parts are composed, or even to perceive and 

c 



34 



The Unity of Nature. 



follow the kind of movement by which its effects are 
produced. And if there be two machines which, in 
respect to structure and movement and material, are 
the same, or closely similar, but which, nevertheless, 
produce totally different kinds of work, we may be 
sure that this difference is the most real and the 
most important truth respecting them. The new 
aspects in which we see their likeness are less full 
and less adequate than the old familiar aspects in 
which we regard them as dissimilar. 

But the Mind is apt to be enamoured of a new 
conception of this kind, and to mistake its place 
and its relative importance in the sphere of know- 
ledge. It is in this way, and in this way only, 
that we can account for the tendency among some 
scientific men to exaggerate beyond all bounds the 
significance of the abstract and artificial definitions 
which they reach by neglecting differences of work, 
of function, and of result, and by fixing their atten- 
tion mainly on some newly discovered likeness 
in respect to form, or motion, or chemical com- 
position. It is thus that because a particular sub- 
stance called " Protoplasm " is found to be present 
in all living Organisms, an endeavour follows to 
get rid of Life as a separate conception, and to 
reduce it to the physical property of this material. 
The fallacy involved in this endeavour needs no 
other exposure than the fact that, as the appearance 



Protoplasm made by Life. 



35 



and the composition of this material is the same 
whether it be dead or living, the Protoplasm of 
which such transcendental properties are affirmed 
has always to be described as " living " Protoplasm. 
But no light can be thrown upon the facts by telling 
us that Life is a property of that which lives. The 
expression for this substance which has been in- 
vented by Professor Huxley is a better one — the 
" Physical Basis of Life." It is better because it does 
not suggest the idea that Life is a mere physical 
property of the substance. But it is, after all, a 
metaphor which does not give an adequate idea of 
the conceptions suggested by the facts. The word 
" basis " has a distinct reference to a mechanical 
support, or to the principal substance in a chemical 
-combination. But at the best there is only a distant 
and metaphorical analogy between these conceptions 
and the conceptions which are suggested by the con- 
nection between Protoplasm and Life. We cannot 
suppose Life to be a substance supported by another. 
Neither can we suppose it to be like a chemical 
element in combination with another. It seems 
rather like a Force of Energy which first works up 
the inorganic materials into the form of Protoplasm, 
and then continues to exert itself through that com- 
bination when achieved. 

We call this kind of energy by a special name, Life, 
for the best of all reasons, that it has special effects 



36 



The Unity of Nature, 



different from all others. It often happens that the 
philosophy expressed in some common form of speech 
is deep and true, whilst the objections which are made 
to it in the name of science are shallow and fallacious. 
This is the case with all those familiar phrases and 
expressions which imply that Life and its phenomena 
are so distinguishable from other things that they 
must be spoken of by themselves. The objection 
made by a well-known writer,^ that we might as 
well speak of " a watch force " as of a " vital force," 
is an objection which has no validity, and is charge- 
able with the great vice of confounding one of the 
clearest distinctions which exist in Nature. The 
rule which should govern language is very plain. 
Every phenomenon or group of phenomena which 
is clearly separate from all others, should have a 
name as separate and distinctive as itself. The 
absurdity of speaking of a "watch force " lies in 
this — that the force by which a watch goes is not 
separable from the force by which many other 
mechanical movements are effected. It is a force 
which is otherwise well known, and can be fully 
expressed in other and more definite terms. That 
force is simply the elasticity of a coiled spring. 
But the phenomena of Life are not due to any 
force which can be fully and definitely expressed 
in other terms. It is not purely chemical, nor 

* Mr. G. H. Lewes. 



Separate Words for Separate Things. 37 



purely mechanical, nor purely electrical, nor reduc- 
ible to any other more simple and elementary con- 
ception. The popular use, therefore, which keeps 
up separate words and phrases by which to de- 
scribe and designate the distinctive phenomena of 
Life, is a use which is correct and thoroughly ex- 
pressive of the truth. There is nothing more 
common and nothing more fallacious in philosophy 
than the endeavour, by mere tricks of language, to 
suppress and keep out of sight the distinctions 
which Nature proclaims with a loud voice. . 

It is thus, also, that because certain creatures 
which, when adult, are widely separate in the scale 
of Being^ may be traced back to some embryonic 
stage, in which they are undistinguishable, it has 
become fashionable to sink the vast differences 
which must lie behind this uniformity of aspect 
and of material composition under some vague 
form of words in which the mind makes, as it 
were, a covenant with itself not to think of such 
differences as are latent and invisible, however 
important we know them to be by the differences 
of result to which they lead. Thus it is common 
now to speak of things widely separated in rank and 
function as being " the same," only " differentiated," 
or "variously conditioned." In these, and in all 
similar cases, the differences which are unseen, 
or which, if seen, are set aside, are often of in- 



33 



The Unity of Nature. 



finitely greater importance than the similarities 
which are selected as the characteristics chiefly 
worthy of regard. If, for example, in the albumen 
of an eo's: there be no discernible differences either 
of structure or of chemical composition, but • if, 
nevertheless, by the mere application of a little 
heat, part of it is " differentiated " into blood, 
another part of it into flesh, another part of it 
into bones, another part of it into feathers, and 
the whole into one perfect Organic Structure, it is 
clear that any purely chemical definition of this 
albumen, or any purely mechanical definition of it, 
would not merely fail of. being complete, but would 
absolutely pass by and pass over the one essential 
characteristic of Vitality which makes it what it is, 
and determines what it is to be in the System of 
Nature. 

Let us always remember that the more perfect 
may be the apparent identity between two things 
which afterwards become widely different, the 
greater must be the power and value of those in- 
visible distinctions — of those unseen factors — which 
determine the subsequent divergence. These distinc- 
tions are invisible, not merely because our methods 
of analysis are too coarse to detect them, but because 
apparently they are of a nature which no physical 
dissection and no chemical analysis could pos- 
sibly reveal. Some scientific men are fond of 



" Molecular Arrangement" not Self- Determined. 39 



speaking and thinking of these invisible factors as 
distinctions due to differences in " molecular arrange- 
ment," as if the more secret agencies of Nature gave 
us the idea of depending on nothing else than 
mechanical arrangement — on differences in the shape 
or in the position of the molecules of Matter. But 
this is by no means true. No doubt there are such 
differences— as far beyond the reach of the micro- 
scope as the differences which the microscope does 
reveal are beyond the reach of our unaided vision. 
But we know enough of the different agencies which 
must lie hid in things apparently the same, to be sure 
that the divergences of work which these agencies 
produce do not depend upon or consist in mere 
differences of mechanical arrangement. We know 
enough of those agencies to be sure that they are 
agencies which do, indeed, determine both arrange- 
ment and composition, but do not themselves consist 
in either. 

This is the conclusion to which we are brought by 
facts which are well known. There are some simple 
structures in Nature which can be seen in the process 
of construction. There are conditions of matter in 
which its particles can be seen rushing under the im- 
pulse of invisible forces to take their appointed place 
in the Form which to them is a Law. Such are the facts 
visible in the processes of Crystallisation. In them 
we can see the particles of matter passing from one 



40 



The Unity of Nature. 



4t molecular condition " to another; and it is impossi- 
ble that this passage can be ascribed either to the old 
arrangement which is broken up, or to the new 
arrangement which is substituted in its stead. Both 
structures have been built up out of elementary 
materials by some constructive agency which is the 
master and not the servant — the cause and not the 
consequence of the movements which are effected, 
and of the arrangement which is their result. And 
if this be true of crystalline forms in the mineral 
kingdom, much more is it true of Organic forms in 
the animal kingdom. Crystals are, as it were, the 
beginnings of Nature's architecture, her lowest and 
simplest forms of building. But the most complex 
crystalline forms which exist — and many of them 
are singularly complex and beautiful — are simplicity 
itself compared with the very lowest Organism which 
is endowed with Life. In the wonderful processes by 
which bone is formed, the foundations or the moulds of 
the structure are first laid down in cartilage or gristle. 
This is a compound substance purely Organic, whereas 
bone is a substance in which the mineral element Cal- 
cium or lime is imported into the structure for the 
purpose of giving it solidity. The movements and 
changes under which this importation of what may 
be called comparatively foreign material is effected, 
have been watched and described. They are changes 
and movements in the cartilage, — that is to say, in the 



u Differentiation " the Work of Invisible Agencies. 41 ' 

form and arrangement of the mould, which are sug- 
gestive of almost conscious anticipation. The mould 
can be seen in the process of being moulded. 
" The cells of the cartilage, with their cell-spaces, 
become larger — flatten out — and usually show a ten- 
dency to arrange themselves in parallel rows ; 
between which, if the change has already been in 
progress for some time, the lines of calcification may 
be seen advancing." * 

This is only one example out of thousands in 
which similar processes have been observed. In 
all living Organisms, therefore, still more than in 
the formation of Crystals, the work of " differentia- 
tion " — that is to say, the work of forming out of 
one material different structures for the discharge 
of different functions — is the work of agencies 
which are invisible and unknown ; and it is in these 
agencies, not in the molecular arrangements which 
they cause, that the essential character and indivi- 
duality of every Organism consists. Accordingly, 
in the development of seeds and of eggs, which are 
the germs of plants and animals respectively, the 
particles of matter can be traced moving, in obedience 
to forces which are unseen, from "molecular condi- 
tions " which appear to be those of almost complete 
homogeneity to other molecular conditions which are 

* " On the Ossification of the Terminal Phalanges of the Digits," by 
F. A. Dixcy, B.A., Oxon. Proceed. Ro. Soc, Vol. XXXI., No. 207. 



42 



The Unity of Nature. 



of inconceivable complexity. In that mystery of all 
mysteries, of which Biologists talk so glibly, the 
living " nucleated Cell," the great work of Creation 
may be seen in actual operation, not caused by 
"molecular condition, " but determining it, and, from 
elements which to all our senses, and to all our 
means of investigation, appear absolutely the same, 
building up the molecules of Protoplasm, now into 
a seaweed, now into a cedar of Lebanon, now into 
an insect, now into a fish, now into a reptile, now 
into a bird, now into a Man. And in proportion as 
the molecules of matter do not even seem to be the 
masters but the servants here, so do the forces which 
dispose of them stand out separate and supreme. 
In every germ this development can only be 
" after its kind." The molecules must obey ; but 
no mere wayward or capricious order can be 
given to them. The formative energies seem 
to be as much under command as the materials 
upon which they work. For, invisible, intangible,, 
and imponderable as these forces are — unknown 
and even inconceivable as they must be in their 
ultimate nature — enough can be traced of their 
working to assure us that they are all closely 
related to each other, and belong to a System 
which is one. Out of the chemical elements of 
Nature, in numerous but definite combinations, it is- 
the special function of Vegetable Life to lay the 



The Conclusion to which Science Leads. 43 



foundations of Organic Mechanism ; whilst it is the 
special function of Animal Life to take in the mate- 
rials thus supplied, and to build them up into the 
highest and most complicated structures. This 
involves a vast cycle of operations, as to the unity 
of which we cannot be mistaken — for it is a cycle of 
operations obviously depending on adjustments 
among all the forces both of solar and terrestrial 
physics — and every part of this vast series of adjust- 
ments must be in continuous and unbroken correla- 
tion with the rest. 

Thus every step in the progress of science which 
tends to reduce all Organisms to one and the same 
set of elementary substances, or to one and the 
same initial structure, only adds to the certainty 
with which we conclude that it is upon something 
else than composition, and upon something else 
than structure, that those vast differences ulti- 
mately depend which separate- so widely between 
living things in rank, in function, and in power. 
And although we cannot tell what that something 
is — although science does not as yet even tend to 
explain what the directive agencies are or how 
they work — one thing, at least, is plain : that if a 
very few elementary substances can enter into an 
untold variety of combinations, and by virtue of 
this variety can be made to play a vast variety of 
parts, this result can only be attained by a system 



44 



The Unity of Nature. 



of mutual adjustments as immense as the variety it 
produces, as minute as the differences on which it 
depends, and as centralised in direction as the order 
and harmony of its results. And so we come to 
understand that the unity which we see in Nature 
is that kind of unity which the Mind recognises as 
the result of operations similar to its own, — not a 
unity which consists in mere sameness of material, 
or in mere identity of composition, or in mere 
uniformity of structure, but a unity which consists 
in the subordination of all these to similar aims 
and to similar principles of action — that is to say, 
in like methods of yoking a few elementary 
forces to the discharge of special functions, and to 
the production, by adjustment, of one harmonious 
Whole. • 

And of this Unity, we who see it, and think of it, 
and speak of it — we are part. In Body and in Mind 
we belong to it, and are included in it. It is more 
easy to admit this as a general proposition than 
really to see it as a truth and to accept all the con- 
sequences it involves. The habitual attitude of our 
thoughts is certainly not in accordance with it. We 
look on " Nature " as something outside of us — 
something on which we can look down, or to which 
we can look up, according to our mood ; but in any 
case, something in which we are exceptions, and 
which we can and ought to regard from an external 



Man Included in the Unity of Nature. 45 



point of view. It may be well, therefore, to consider 
a little more carefully "Man's place in Nature" — 
his share and position in that unity which he sees 
and feels around him. 



CHAPTER II. 

Man's Place in the Unity of Nature. 

IV /X AN is included in the Unity of Nature, in the 
first place, as regards the composition of his 
Body. Out of the ordinary elements of the material 
world is that Body made, and into those elements it 
is resolved again. With all its beauties of form 
and of expression, with all its marvels of structure 
and of function, there is nothing whatever in it 
except some few of the elementary substances 
which are common in the atmosphere and the soil. 
The three commonest gases, oxygen, hydrogen, and 
nitrogen, with carbon and with sulphur, are the foun- 
dation stones. In slightly different proportions, these 
elements constitute the primordial combination of 
matter which is the abode of Life. In the finished 
structure there appear, besides, lime, potash, and 
a little iron, sodium, and phosphorus. These are the 
constituents of the human Body— of these in dif- 
ferent combinations — and, so far as we know, of 



Relationship through Composition of our Bodies. 47 



nothing else. The same general composition, with 
here and there an ingredient less or more, prevails 
throughout the whole animal and vegetable world, 
and its elements are the commonest in the Inorganic 
Kingdom also. 

This may seem a rude, and it is certainly a rudi- 
mentary view of the relation which prevails between 
ourselves and the world around us. And yet it is 
the foundation, or at least one of the foundations, 
on which all other relations depend. It is because 
of the composition of our Body, that the animals and 
plants around us are capable of ministering to our 
support — that the cornmon air is to us the very 
breath of life, and that herbs and minerals in abun- 
dance have either poisoning properties or healing 
virtue. For both of these effects are alike the 
evidence of some relation to the Organism they 
affect ; and both are in different degrees so prevalent 
and pervading, that of very few things indeed can 
it be said that they are wholly inert upon us. Yet 
there is no substance of the thousands which in one 
manner or another affect the Body, which does not 
so affect it by virtue of some relation which it bears 
to the elements of which that Body is composed, or 
to the combinations into which those elements have 
been cast. 

And here we ascend one step higher among the 
facts which include Man within the Unity of Nature. 



The Ufiity of Nature. 



For he is united with the world in which he moves, 
not only by the elements of which his Body is com- 
posed, but also by the methods in which those 
elements are combined — the forces by which they 
are held together, and the principles of construc- 
tion according to which they are built up into sepa- 
rate Organs for the discharge of separate functions. 
Science has cast no light on the ultimate nature of 
Life. But whatever it be, it has evidently funda- 
mental elements which are the same throughout the 
whole circle of the Organic world ; the same in their 
relations to the Inorganic; the same in the powers 
by which are carried on the great functions of nutri- 
tion, of growth, of respiration, and reproduction. 
There are, indeed, infinitely varied modifications 
in the mechanism of the same Organs to accommo- 
date them to innumerably different modes by which 
different animals obtain their food, their oxygen, 
and their means of movement. Yet so evident is 
the unity which prevails throughout, that Physio- 
logists are compelled to recognise the fundamental 
facts of Organic Life as " the same, from the lowest 
animal inhabiting a stagnant pool up to the glorious 
mechanism of the human form." * 

This language is not the expression of mere 
poetic fancy, nor is it founded on dim and vague 

* On the Nervous System, by Alex. Shaw. Appendix to Sir Charles 

Bell's "Anatomy of Expression." 



Relationship through our Organic Life. 49 

analogies. It is founded on the most definite facts 
which can be ascertained of the ultimate pheno- 
mena of Organic Life, and it expresses the clearest 
conceptions that can be formed of its essential 
properties. The creature which naturalists call 
the Amoeba, one of the lowest in the animal series, 
consists of nothing but an apparently simple and 
formless jelly. But simple and formless as it 
appears to be, this jelly exhibits all the wonder 
and mystery of that power which we know as Life. 
It is in virtue of that power that the dead or inor- 
ganic elements of which it is composed are held 
together in a special and delicate combination, 
which no other power can preserve in union, and 
which begins to dissolve the moment that power 
departs. And as in virtue of this power the con- 
stituent elements are held in a peculiar relation to 
each other, so in virtue of the same power does the 
combination possess peculiar relations with external 
things. It has the faculty of appropriating foreign 
substances into its own, making them subservient 
to the renewal of its own material, to the mainten- 
ance of its own energy, and to the preservation of 
its own separate individuality. It has the faculty, 
moreover, of giving off parts of itself, endowed with 
the same properties, to lead a separate existence. 
This same substance, which when analysed has- 
always the same chemical composition, and when 

D 



50 



The Unity of N attire. 



alive has always the same fundamental properties, 
is at the root of every Organism, whether animal 
or vegetable. Out of its material all visible struc- 
ture is built up, and the power which holds its 
elements together is the same power which per- 
forms the further work of moulding them into 
tissues — first forming them and then feeding them, 
and then keeping them in life. This is as true 
of the highest Organism of Man as it is of the 
lowest, in which visible structure begins to be. 
The phenomena of disease have convinced Physio- 
logists that all the tissues of the body are freely 
penetrated by the protoplasmic corpuscles of the 
blood, and that the primordial properties displayed 
in the substance of an Amoeba, which has no dis- 
tinguishable parts and no separate organs, afford 
the only key to the fundamental properties of every 
animal body. One eminent observer assigns so 
high a place to this protoplasmic matter as the 
primary physical agent in the building of the 
House of Life, and in its renovation and repair, 
that he considers all its other materials, and all its 
completed structures, as comparatively " dead.* 

But the unity of Man's body with the rest of 
Nature lies deeper still than this. The same 
elements and the same primary compounds are 
but the foundations from which the higher unities 
arise. These higher unities appear to depend 



Relationship through Organic Function. 5 1 



upon and to be explained by this — that there are 
certain things which must be done for the support 
of Animal Life, and these things are fundamentally 
the same from the lowest to the highest creatures. 
It is for the doing of these things that "Organs" 
are required, and it is in response to this require- 
ment that they are provided. Food — that is to 
say, foreign material — must be taken in, and it 
must be assimilated. The circulating fluids of the 
body must have vessels in which to circulate, and 
through the walls of these they must be allowed to 
absorb oxygen ; and when this cannot be done more 
simply, a special apparatus must be provided for 
the separation of this essential element of life from 
the air or from the water. Sensation must be 
localised and adapted to the perception of move- 
ments in surrounding media. The tremors of the 
atmosphere and of the luminiferous medium must 
first be caught upon responsive — that is to say, 
upon adapted— surfaces, and then they must be 
translated into the language of Sensation — that is 
to say, into sight and hearing. The heat evolved 
in the chemical processes of digestion and of oxy- 
genation of the blood must be made convertible 
into other forms of motion. The forces thus con- 
centrated must be stored, rendered accessible to 
the Will, and distributed to members which are at 
its command. These and many other uniform 



52 The Unity of Nature. 



necessities of the animal frame constitute a unity 
of function in Organs of the widest dissimilarity of 
form, so that however different they may be in 
shape, or in structure, or in position, they are all 
obviously reducible to one common interpretation. 
They do the same things — they serve the same 
purposes — they secure the same ends — or, to use 
the language of physiology, they discharge the 
same functions in the animal economy. 

But more than this : even the differences of form 
steadily diminish as we ascend in the scale of Being. 
Not only are the same functions discharged, but 
they are discharged by Organs of the same general 
shape, formed on one pattern and occupying an 
identical position in one plan of structure. It is on 
this fact that the science of Comparative Anatomy 
is founded, and the well-established doctrine of 
"homologies." The homology of two Organs in 
two separate animals is nothing but the unity of 
place which they occupy in a structure which is 
recognised as one and the same in a vast variety 
of creatures- — a structure which is one in its general 
conception, and one in the relative arrangement of 
its parts. In this clear and very definite sense, the 
body of Man, as a whole, is one in structure with 
the bodies of all vertebrate animals ; and as we rise 
from the lowest of these to him who is the highest, 
we see that same structure elaborated into closer 



Relationship through Organic Structure. 53 



and closer likeness, until every part corresponds — 
bone to bone, tissue to tissue,, organ to organ. 

It is round this fact that so many disputants are 
now fighting. But all the controversy arises not as to 
the existence of the fact, but as to its physical cause. 
The fact is beyond question. In a former work*" I 
have dwelt at some length on the bearing of this 
fact on our conceptions of " Creation by Law," and 
on the various theories which assume that such 
close relationship in Organic Structure can be due 
to no other cause than blood relationship through 
ordinary generation. At present I am only con- 
cerned with the fact of unity, whatever may be the 
physical cause from which that unity has arisen. 
The significance of it, as establishing Man's place 
in the Unity of Nature, is altogether independent 
of any conclusion which may be reached as to those 
processes of creation by which his body has been 
fashioned on a plan which is common to him and 
to so many animals beneath him. Whether Man 
has been separately created out of the inorganic 
elements of which his body is composed, or whether 
it was born of matter previously organised in 
lower forms, this community of structure must 
equally indicate a corresponding community of 
relations with external things, and some antecedent 
necessity deeply seated in the very nature of 

* ''The Reign of Law," 



54 



The Unity of 'Nature. 



those things, why his bodily frame should be like 
to theirs. 

And, indeed, when we consider the matter, it is 
sufficiently apparent that the relationship of Man's 
body to the bodies of the lower animals is only a 
subordinate part and consequence of that higher and 
more general relationship which prevails between all 
living things and those elementary Forces of Nature 
which play in them, and around them, and upon 
them. If we could only know what that relationship 
is in its real nature and in its full extent, we should 
know one of the most inscrutable of all secrets. For 
that secret is no other than the ultimate nature of 
Life. The great object is to keep the little know- 
ledge of it which we possess safe from the confusing 
effect of deceptive definitions. The real unities of 
Nature will never be reached by confounding her 
distinctions. For certain purposes it may be a legi- 
timate attempt to reduce the definition of Life to its 
lowest terms — that is to say, it may be legitimate to 
fix our attention exclusively on those characteristics 
which are common to Life in its lowest and in its 
highest forms, and to set aside all other characteris- 
tics in which they differ. It may be useful some- 
times to look at Life under the terms of such a defi- 
nition, in order, for example, the better to conceive 
some of its relations with other things. But in doing 
so we must take care not to drop out of the terms 



The Unity involved in Adaptation. 55 



so defining Life anything really essential to the very 
idea of it. Artificial definitions of this kind are 
dangerous experiments in philosophy. It is very 
easy by mere artifices of language to obliterate the 
most absolute distinctions which exist in Nature. 
Between the living and the non-living there is a great 
gulf fixed, and the indissoluble connection which 
somehow, nevertheless, we know to exist between 
them, is a connection which does not fill up that gulf, 
but is kept up by some bridge being, as it were, 
artificially built across it. This unity, like the other 
unities of Nature, is not a unity consisting of mere 
continuity of substance. It is not founded upon 
sameness, but, on the contrary, rather upon differ- 
ence, and even upon antagonisms. Only, the forces 
which are thus different and opposed are subordi- 
nate to a system of adaptation and adjustment 

Nor must we fail to notice the kind of unity which 
is implied in the very words "adaptation" and 
" adjustment " — and, above all others, in the special 
adjustments connected with Organic Life. There 
are many unions which do not involve the idea of 
adjustment, or which involve it only in the most 
rudimentary form. The mere chemical union, for 
example, of two or more elements — unless under 
special conditions — is not properly an adjustment 
We should not naturally call the formation of rust 
an adjustment between the oxygen of the atmo- 



56 



The Unity of Nature. 



sphere and metallic iron. When the combinations 
effected by the play of chemical affinities are brought 
about by the selection of elements so placed within 
reach of each other's reactions as to result in a given 
product, then that product would be accurately 
described as the result of co-ordination and adjust- 
ment. But the kind of co-ordination and adjustment 
which appear in the facts of Life is of a still higher 
and more complicated kind than this. Whatever 
the relationship may be between living Organisms 
and the elements, or elementary forces of external 
Nature, it certainly is not the relationship of mere 
chemical affinities. On the contrary, the unions 
which these affinities by themselves produce can 
only be reached through the dissolution and des- 
truction of living bodies. The subjugation of 
chemical forces under some higher form of energy, 
which works them for the continued maintenance of 
a separate individuality — this is of the very essence 
of Life. The destruction of that separateness or 
individuality is of the very essence of Death. It is 
not Life, but the cessation of Life, which, in this 
sense and after this manner, effects a chemical union 
of the elements of the body with the same and with 
other elements around it. There is indeed an 
adjustment — a close and intricate adjustment— be- 
tween the chemical affinities of these elements as 
they are combined in the living body ; but it is an 



Subordination of the Physical Forces, 5 7 



adjustment of them under the controlling energy of 
a power which cannot be identified with any other, 
and which always presents phenomena peculiar to 
itself. Under that power we see that the laws and 
forces of Chemical Affinity, as exhibited apart from 
Life, are held, as it were, to service — compelled, 
indeed, to minister, but not allowed to rule. 
Through an infinite variety of Organisms, this mys- 
terious subordination is maintained, ministering 
through an ascending series to higher and higher 
grades of sensation, perception, consciousness, and 
thought. 

And here we come in sight of the highest adjust- 
ment of all. Sensation, perception, consciousness, 
and thought, — these, if they be not the very essence 
of Life, are at least — in their order — its highest 
accompaniments and result. They are the ulti- 
mate facts, they are the final realities, to which 
all lesser adjustments are themselves adjusted. 
For, as the elementary substances and the ele- 
mentary Forces of Nature which are used in the 
building of the body are there held by the energies 
of Life under a special and peculiar relation to 
those same elements and to those same forces out- 
side the body, so also are they held in peculiar 
relations to those characteristic powers in which 
we are compelled to recognise the rudimentary 
faculties of Mind. Sensation is the first of these, 



58 



The Unity of Nature, 



and if it be the lowest, it is at least the indis- 
pensable basis of all the rest. As such, it cannot 
be studied too attentively in the first stages of 
its appearance, if we desire to understand the 
unity of which it is the index and result. We 
have seen that the mechanism of living bodies 
is one throughout the whole range of Animal Life 
— one in its general plan, and one even in the 
arrangement of many of its details. We have 
seen, too, that this unity rests upon that other — in 
virtue of which all Organisms depend for the main- 
tenance of their life, upon adjustments to certain 
physical laws which are held, as it were, in vassal- 
age, and compelled to service ; doing in that service 
what they never do alone, and not doing in that 
service what they always do when freed from it. 

And now we have to ask what that service is ?' 
We can only say that it is the service of Life in 
all its manifestations, from those which we see in 
the lowest creatures up to the highest of which, 
in addition, we are conscious in ourselves. I say 
" in addition " — because this is the fundamental 
lesson of Physiology and of Comparative Anatomy 
— that the principle and the mechanism of sen- 
sation are the same in all creatures, at least in 
all which have the rudiments of a nervous system. 
This identity of principle and of structure in the 
machinery of Sensation, taken together with the 



Sensation the same in all Animals. 



59 



identity of the. outward manifestations which accom- 
pany and indicate its presence in animals, makes 
it certain that in itself it is everywhere the same. 
This does not mean, of course — very far from it — 
that the range of pleasure or of pain consequent 
on sensation — still less the range of intelligent 
perception — is the same throughout the Animal 
Kingdom. The range of pleasure or of pain, and 
still more the range of intelligent perception, de- 
pends on the association of higher faculties with 
mere sensations, and upon other peculiarities or 
conditions of Organisation. We all know by our 
own experience, when comparing ourselves w T ith 
ourselves in different states of health or of disease, 
and by observing the like facts in others, that the 
degree of pleasure or of suffering, of emotion or of 
intellectual activity, which is connected with sen- 
sation, may be almost infinitely various according 
to various conditions of the body. But this does 
not affect the general proposition that Sensation is 
in itself one thing throughout the Animal Kingdom. 
It cannot be defined in language, because all lan- 
guage is founded on it, assumes it to be known, and 
uses the metaphors it supplies for the expression of 
our highest intellectual conceptions. But though it 
cannot be defined, this at least we can say con- 
cerning it, that Sensation is the characteristic pro- 
perty of Animal Life ; that it is an affection of the 



6o 



The Unity of Nature. 



" Anima," of that which distinguishes animate from 
inanimate things, and that as such it constitutes one 
of the most essential of the fundamental properties 
of Mind. 

So true is this, that the very word " Idea," which 
has played a memorable part in the 'history of 
speculation, and which in common speech has 
now come to be generally associated with the 
highest intellectual abstractions, has had in modern 
philosophy no other definite meaning than the 
impressions or mental images received through 
the senses. This is the meaning attached to it 
(although, perhaps, no writer has ever adhered 
to it with perfect consistency) in the writings of 
Descartes, of Locke, and of Bishop Berkeley ; 
and it is well worthy of remark that the most 
extreme doctrine of Idealism, which denies the 
reality of Matter, and, indeed, the reality of every- 
thing except Mind, is a doctrine which may be as 
logically founded upon sensation in a Zoophyte 
as upon sensation in a Man. The famous proposi- 
tion of Bishop Berkeley, which he considers as 
almost self-evidently true, " that the various sensa- 
tions, or ideas imprinted on the sense, cannot exist 
otherwise than in the Mind perceiving them," is a 
proposition clearly applicable to all forms of sensa- 
tion whatever. For every sensation of an Organism 
is equally in the nature of an "Idea" in being an 



Sensation an Affection of Mind. 61 



affection of the living principle, which alone is 
susceptible of such affections ; and it is plainly 
impossible to conceive any sense-impression what- 
ever as existing outside a living and perceiving- 
creature. 

We are now, indeed, so accustomed to attach the 
word " Idea" to the highest exercises of Mind, and 
to confine the word " Mind " itself to some of its 
higher manifestations, that it may startle some men 
to be told that sensation is in itself a mental affec- 
tion. We have, however, only to consider for a 
moment how inseparably connected sensation is 
with appetite and with perception, to be convinced 
that in the phenomena of sensation we have the 
first raw materials and the first small beginnings of 
Intelligence and of Will. It is this fundamental 
character of sensation which explains and justifies 
the assertion of philosophers — an assertion which at 
first sight appears to be a mere paradox — that the 
" Ideas " we receive through the senses have no 
" likeness" to the objects they represent. For that 
assertion, after all, means nothing more than this 
— that the impressions made by external things 
upon living Beings through the senses, are in 
themselves mental impressions, and as such can- 
not be conceived as like in their own nature to 
inanimate and external objects. It is the mental 
quality of all sensation, considered in itself, which 



62 



The Unity of Nature. 



is really affirmed in this denial of likeness between 
the affections of sense and the things which pro- 
duce those affections in us. It is one of the many 
forms in which we are compelled to recognise 
the inconceivableness of any sort of resemblance 
between Mind and Matter, between external things 
and our own perceptive powers. 

And yet it is across this great gulf of differ- 
ence — apparently so broad and so profound— ^-that 
the highest Unity of Nature is nevertheless estab- 
lished. Matter built up and woven into " Organs" 
under the powers of Life is the strong foundation 
on which this unity is established. It is the unity 
which exists between the living Organism and the 
elements around it which renders that Organism 
the appropriate channel of mental communica- 
tion with the external world, and a faithful inter- 
preter of its signs. And this the Organism is — not 
only by virtue of its substance and composition, 
but also and especially by virtue of its adjusted 
structures. All the organs of sense* discharge 
their functions in virtue of a purely mechanical 
adjustment between the structure of the Organ 
and the particular form of external force w T hich 
it is intended to receive and to transmit. How 
fine those adjustments are can best be under- 
stood when we remember that the retina of the 
eye is a machine which measures and distinguishes 



Adjustment between the Senses and their Objects. 63 



between vibrations which are now known to differ 
from each other by only a few millionths of an inch. 
Yet this amount of difference is recorded and made 
instantly appreciable in the sensations of colour by 
the adjusted mechanism of the eye. Another ad- 
justment, precisely the same in principle, between 
the vibrations of Sound and the structure of the ear, 
enables those vibrations to be similarly distinguished 
in another special form of the manifold language of 
sensation. And so of all the other organs of sense 
— they all perform their work in virtue of that 
purely mechanical adjustment which places them in 
a given relation to certain selected manifestations 
of external force, and these they faithfully transmit, 
according to a code of signals, the nature of which 
is one of the primary mysteries of Life, but the 
truthfulness of which is at the same time one of 
the most certain of its facts. 

For it is upon this truthfulness — that is to say, upon 
a close and efficient correspondence between the im- 
pressions of Sense and certain corresponding realities 
of external Nature — that the success of every Organ- 
ism depends in the battle of life. And all Life in- 
volves a battle. It comes indeed to each animal 
without effort of its own, but it cannot be maintained 
without individual exertion. That exertion may be 
of the simplest kind, nothing more than the rhythmic 
action of a muscle contracting and expanding so as 



64 The Unity of Nature. 



to receive into a sac such substances as currents of 
water may bring along with them ; or it may be the 
more complex action required to make or induce the 
very currents which are to bring the food ; or it may 
be the much more complex exertions required in 
all active locomotion for the pursuit and capture of 
prey : all these forms of exertion exist, and are all 
required in endless variety in the animal world. 

And throughout the whole of this vast series the 

<_> 

very life of every creature depends on the unity 
which exists between its sense-impressions and those 
realities of the external world which are specially 
related to them. There is therefore no conception 
of the Mind which rests on a broader basis of ex- 
perience than that which affirms this unity — a unity 
which constitutes and guarantees the various senses 
with their corresponding appetites, each in its own 
sphere of adapted relations, to be exact and faithful 
interpreters of external truth. 

A still more wonderful and striking proof is 
obtained of the Unity of Nature, and a still more 
instructive light is cast upon the depth of its source 
and character, when we observe how far-reaching 
these interpretations of sense are even in the very 
lowest creatures : how they are true not only in the 
immediate impressions they convey, but true also as 
the index of truths which lie behind and beyond 
— of truths, that is to say, which are not expressly 



Deeper Affinities of Sense- Impressions. 65 



included — not directly represented — in either sensa- 
tion or perception. This, indeed, is one main 
function and use, and one universal characteristic, 
of all sense-impressions, that over and above the 
pleasure they give to sentient creatures, they lead 
and guide to acts required by natural laws which 
are not themselves objects of sensation at all, and 
which therefore the creatures conforming to them 
cannot possibly either see or comprehend. It is 
thus that the appetite of hunger and the sense of 
taste, which in some form or other, however low, 
is perhaps the most universal sensation of animal 
Organisms, is true not only as a guide to the sub- 
stances which do actually gratify the sense con- 
cerned, but true also in its unseen and unfelt 
relations with those demands or laws of force which 
render the assimilation of new material an indispens- 
able necessity in the maintenance of Animal Lite. 
Throughout the whole Kingdom of Nature this 
law prevails. Sense-perceptions are in all animals 
indissolubly united with instantaneous impulses to 
action. This action is always directed to external 
things. It finds in these things the satisfaction of 
whatever desire is immediately concerned, and be- 
yond this it ministers to ends of which the animal 
knows nothing, but which are of the highest import- 
ance both in its own economy and in the general- 
economy of Nature. 



66 



The Unity of Natun 



The wonderful instincts of the lower animals — 
the precision and perfection of their work — are a 
glorious example of this far-reaching adjustment 
between the perceptions of sense and the laws 
which prevail in the external world. Narrow as 
the sphere of those perceptions may be, yet within 
that sphere they are almost absolutely true. And 
although the sphere is indeed narrow as regards 
the very low and limited Intelligence with which it 
is associated in the animals themselves, it is a 
sphere which beyond the scope of their Intelligence 
can be seen to place them in unconscious relation 
with endless vistas of co-ordinated action. The 
sentient actions of the lower animals involve not 
merely the rudimentary power of perceiving the 
differences which distinguish things, but the much 
higher power of profiting by those relations between 
things which are the foundation of all voluntary 
agency, and which place in the possession of living 
creatures the power of attaining ends through the 
employment of appropriate means. The direct and 
intuitive perception of things which stand in the 
relation of means to ends, though it may be entirely 
dissociated from any conscious recognition of this 
relation in itself— that is to say, the direct and 
intuitive perception of the necessity of doing one 
thing in order to attain to another thing — is in 
itself one of the very highest among the pre- 



Significance of Instinct in the Unity of Nature. 67 



adjusted harmonies of Nature. For it must be 
remembered that those relations between things 
which render them capable of being used as means 
to ends, are relations which never can be the direct 
objects of Sensation, and therefore the power of 
acting upon them is an intuition of something 
which is out of sight. It is a kind of dim seeing 
of that which is invisible. And even if it be 
separated entirely in the lower animals — as it 
almost certainly is — from anything comparable 
with our own prescient and reasoning powers, it 
does not the less involve in them a true and close 
relation between their instincts and the Order of 
Nature with its laws. 

The spinning machinery which is provided in 
the body of a Spider is not more accurately ad- 
justed to the viscid secretion which is provided 
for it, than the instinct of the Spider is adjusted 
both to the construction of its web and also to 
the selection of likely places for the capture of 
its prey. Those birds and insects whose young 
are hatched by the heat of fermentation have an 
intuitive impulse to select the proper materials, 
and to gather them for the purpose. All creatures, 
guided sometimes apparently by senses of which 
we know nothing, are under like impulses to pro- 
vide effectually for the nourishing of their young. 
It is, moreover, most curious and instructive to 



68 



The Unity of Nature. 



observe that the extent of prevision which is 
involved in this process, and in the securing of 
the result, seems very often to be greater as we 
descend in the scale of Nature, and in proportion 
as the parents are dissociated from the actual 
feeding or personal care of their young. The 
Mammalia have nothing to provide except food 
for themselves, and have at first, and for a long 
time, no duty to perform beyond the discharge of 
a purely physical function. Milk is secreted in 
them by a purely unconscious process, and the 
young need no instruction in the art of sucking. 
Birds have much more to do — in the building of 
nests, in the choice of sites for these, and after 
incubation, in the choice of food adapted to the 
period of growth. Insects, much lower in the 
scale of Organisation, have to provide very often 
for a much more distant future, and for various 
stages of development not only in their own young 
but in the nidus which surrounds them. 

There is one group of insects, well known to 
every observer — the common Gall-flies — which 
have the power of calling on the vegetable world 
to do for them the work of nest-building ; and in 
response to the means with which these insects are 
provided, the Oak, or the Willow, or the Rose, does 
actually lend its power of growth to provide a 
special nidus by which the plant protects the young 



Operations not according to Ordinary Law. 69 



insect as carefully as it protects its own seed. I 
shall dwell on this example for a moment, because 
it is not easy to exhaust the wonders which are 
involved in this cycle of operations. For it is to be 
observed that they are not operations conducted 
according to the ordinary laws of Nature. It is 
indeed according to that ordinary course that vege- 
table Organisms should pour out their juices when 
they are wounded. It is an incident of their lowei 
organisation, and lower rank in the scale of life, that 
they can bleed more copiously from such wounds 
without fatal injury than it would be possible foi 
animals to bleed. But the flow of the juices undei 
such circumstances is as it were a heedless flow- 
vacant of any purpose or intention— discharging no 
function in the vegetable economy or in the economy 
of external Nature. Least of all has it any regard 
to life other than its own. If any insect be involved 
in that flow, the consequences to it are instant 
death. Its legs and wings are clogged ; its respira- 
tory orifices are filled up, and every function of its 
body is stopped for ever. It is thus that some of 
the insects of a former age in the world's history 
have been preserved to us by the exudations of 
some unknown species of Pine, whose hardened 
gum is known to us as Amber. It is also according 
to the ordinary course of Nature that foreign sub- 
stances introduced into the growing tissues of a 



7° 



The Unity of Nature. 



plant should be surrounded by those tissues and in- 
volved in them. But here also the involvement is 
purely mechanical, and the grip with which the in- 
truding substance is seized and held, is a grip blind 
and ruthless. Bands of the strongest iron are often 
thus involved, and are burst asunder like green 
withes by the slow but tremendous energies of 
vegetable growth. The woody fibre too, which 
surrounds such substances, is very apt to be the 
hardest and toughest of all, and this is almost in- 
variably the case with the growths which arise from 
injury or disease, with the wens and excrescences 
on the bark and stems of trees. 

It is therefore in absolute difference and contradis- 
tinction from all these natural laws, that the Oak, 
for example, is made to provide out of its own sub- 
stance a wonderful nest for the egg and larva of the 
Gall-fly. If we examine one form of these nests, 
for example, that of the Marble Gall (which is the 
nest of the species known to entomologists as the 
Cynips Kolleri)> we shall find that there has been 
formed on the branch or twig of the Oak a globular 
body of the most curious and complex structure. 
Externally, it has a skin which imitates the natural 
bark. Internally, it consists of a pithy tissue which 
is wholly unlike any of the tissues produced by the 
Oak under its natural conditions. It is a radiating 
tissue, and yet it does not radiate from the poiafi 



Wonderful Structure of a Gall. Ji 



which is its apparent point of growth or of attach- 
ment to the stalk. It radiates from its own centre, 
— or rather from a little cell or chamber which oc- 
cupies that centre. This cell or chamber is inter- 
nally quite smooth, has a thin wall of hardened 
material, and is of the exact size and capacity which 
will admit of the insect larva being coiled up com- 
fortably within it, and of attaining there a certain 
definite degree of development or of growth. Out- 
side the thin wall of this cell or chamber, and 
between it and the external bark, the whole sphere 
is filled with a substance which may be described 
as a granular pith which radiates in all directions 
from the cell to the circumference. If one of these 
Galls be cut or broken open in the autumn 
when it is becoming ripe, and if the cut be made 
so as to expose the whole in section, one of the 
most curious sights in Nature is exposed to view. 
The grub is seen folded in its pregnant rest. The 
mysterious changes which are going on in its body 
are indeed invisible. And so also are the equally 
mysterious processes by which that body came to 
be there at all, and to be provided with such a home. 
These processes are wholly different in kind from 
all others in Nature. Among birds, the embryo 
chick is hatched within a shell which has indeed a 
wonderful structure and many curious properties. 
But that shell is constructed in the ovary of the 



72 



The Unity of N attire. 



mother-bird, and out of calcareous material which 
that mother has taken in as food. The Dormouse 
builds the nest in which itself hybernates. It is a 
wonderful structure, built from the inside outwards, 
suspended also by the inmate, before it closes the 
final aperture, upon the bough of some sheltered 
thicket, and so warmly spun that neither the rains 
nor cold of winter can pierce the texture and chill 
the sleeper. But in this case the animal has the 
mechanical weapons by which the material can be 
cut and can be woven. The Caterpillar also spins 
its own cocoon ; but here also the spinning machi- 
nery is given to the creature, and the secretions of 
its own body are sufficient to provide the threads, 
which, when farther woven, are the richest and 
costliest of human garments. But there is no similar 
explanation of this strange abode of the larva of the 
Gall-fly. It has no means of making the nest in 
which it lies : the material does not come from its 
own body, nor from the bodies of its parents. 
Neither is that material even woven or built or 
fashioned by the one or by the other. Across a 
great gap and gulf in Nature — even that which 
separates a highly-organised plant from a highly- 
organised insect — this strange unity of co-operation 
has been effected. The Oak has yielded up its 
juices to protect a stranger : they overflow it with- 
out venturing to involve it, — circling round it and 



Results highly Artificial. 



73 



"bending over it, — as if in awe before a Life which 
is higher than their own. If it be true that Solomon 
in all his glory was not arrayed like a flower, it is 
equally true that neither Solomon when an infant, 
nor any child of Man, has ever been cradled as this 
insect is. All the richest products of Nature and 
of art are sometimes lavished on the little bed 
which is to hold a human infant. For these pur- 
poses, and for a thousand others like to these, 
Nature yields to Man her dead products, but she 
never yields her living powers. Yet for the nur- 
ture and protection of this poor maggot, the most 
secret of these powers are held to labour. The 
forces of vegetable growth work for it as they never 
work even for their own natural organs. They 
secrete for it a peculiar substance ; they mould it 
into a peculiar form ; they hang it out in the light 
and air as if it were their own fruit ; they even 
exhaust themselves in its service, and their own 
.flowers and leaves are often cankered in its support. 

All this is an exception to ordinary laws : a break, 
as it might almost seem, in the Unity and in the 
Continuity of Nature. And so in a sense it is. It 
is no natural function of the Oak or of the Rose tc 
produce these Galls. They are in one sense of the 
word unnatural, and in the truest sense of the word 
highly artificial. But this is the very character 
which reveals their place in the Unity of Nature by 



74 



The Unity of N attire. 



revealing them in connection with a higher circle 
of laws than those in ordinary operation. Under 
these higher laws, the mere physical and vital forces 
are seen to be as clay in the hands of the Potter. 
Their subordination may be hidden sometimes, at 
least to our blind eyes, under the Uniformities of 
Nature : but it becomes, as it were, almost tangible 
and visible when these Uniformities are so strangely 
broken. And yet in what may be called this dis- 
tortion of Vegetable vitality to purposes which are 
in a sense unnatural, there is no breach in the great 
mental law which demands the special adaptation of 
means to ends. This adaptation is revealed when 
we examine the structure of the mother Gall-fly. It 
then becomes at once apparent that the Gall is pro- 
duced by the operation of an elaborate apparatus. 
This apparatus is so elaborate and so complicated 
that the most eminent Entomologists have been 
exercised upon its mechanism since the days of 
Reaumur, without being able fully to explain or 
understand it. The general principle, indeed, or idea 
of the apparatus appears to be ascertained. It is 
an apparatus for inserting the egg of the fly into 
vegetable tissue, with such effects upon that tissue, 
both by mechanical injury and by chemical poisoning, 
that the plant is stimulated and excited to abnormal 
action and to artificial growths. For this extra- 
ordinary purpose, and with this most mysterious 



But the Unity of Nature Maintained. 75 



and complicated result, there is elaborated in the 
body of the fly implements for boring, for rasping, 
for brushing, for irritating by mechanical means the 
substance of the plant. The same implements are 
farther made to subserve the function of inserting 
the egg, and along with it of inserting also some 
acrid animal secretion which has a specific action 
on the secretions of the plant. This is the sum 
and substance of all that is known about it. It 
leaves the special mystery of the result wholly 
unexplained ; because in no other case, and under 
no other guidance, can either mechanical injury or 
chemical poisoning produce in plants any morbid 
growth which is other than regardless of the interests 
and of the life of external Organisms. But although 
the method of operation is wholly inexplicable, and 
the general result remains as exceptional as before, 
yet the fact of it being done by an apparatus as 
special and exceptional as the result, is a fact which 
brings it at once within the Unity of Nature in the 
highest sense in which that Unity is intelligible to 
us. We can at least see that it is done by knowing 
how to do it. The great gap and gulf which lies 
in Organisation between the Plant and the Insect is 
spanned and arched across by knowledge of intimate 
relations between them which are unknown to us^ 
and by command over resources which bring these 
relations into artificial co-operation. 



76 



The Unity of Nature. 



And then when this recognition is arrived at, 
other recognitions follow, which bring into closer 
and closer correspondence the phenomena of our 
own Mind, and the peculiar series of phenomena 
which in the case of the Gall-flies are to be observed 
in Nature. For just as the human Mind, when a 
new idea has shone upon it, reflects that idea in a 
variety of forms, and finds new and ever newer ap- 
plications for it, so it transpires that in like manner 
Nature, having as it were entered upon this very 
special line of contrivance for the development of 
insect life, pursues it through every form and variety 
of device. Not only are there a great variety of 
Galls produced by different species of fly upon 
different species of tree, but a great variety is 
produced upon the same tree by the different 
apparatus with which different flies are armed. 
The bark is attacked by one species, the leaves by 
another; the young shoots, the parts of fructifica- 
tion, and even the tendrils of the roots, have, each 
and all, some special form of Gall-fly to whom the}" 
are compelled to yield their various powers and 
functions. But in everv case those functions are 
as it were perverted from the ordinary course of 
Nature, and develop products unlike to any which 
they develop when that ordinary course is not 
interfered with. The Galls which hang upon the 
Catkins are like a bunch of grapes. The root pro- 



Far-reaching Nature of the Gall-fly s Instinct. 77 



duces a large Gall, in which are chambers provided 
for a whole colony of grubs. Some Galls are 
prickly, some are branched, and some resemble 
little artichokes. Others are of the colour and con- 
sistency of waxy apples. One foreign species is 
invaluable in the manufacture of ink, because the 
united chemistry of the insect and the plant have 
there produced an acid which Nature does not else- 
where distil.* 

Now, it is to be observed of all this wonderful 
combination and co-operation of agencies, animal 
and vegetable, that the blind appetite and instinct 
of the creature, which impels it to set this apparatus 
to work in the proper place, is an instinct in which 
the whole knowledge and foreknowledge of these 
operations is hidden and implied. The perceptions 
of taste, or of smell, or of whatever other sense they 
may have, and which we have not, which determine 
the choice of the fly and make it select the right 
portion of the plant for the work of depositing its 
egg, are perceptions which are true for a long way 
beyond the immediate operation which they at once 
stimulate and direct. They are perceptions which 
stand in unbroken— though they are unseen — 
relations with a whole world beyond that which 
the creature sees, and with a distant future. 

* Westwood's Introduction to the Modern Classification of Insects, 
vol. II., the Cynipidae, passim. 



78 



The Unity of Nature, 



There is another example of the same wealth of 
meaning in animal instincts which in some points 
of view is even more remarkable. Bees, if we are 
to believe the evidence of observers, have an in- 
tuitive guidance in the selection of food, which has 
the power of producing organic changes in the 
bodies of the young, and by the administration of 
which, under what may be called artificial conditions, 
the sex of certain selected individuals can be deter- 
mined, so that they may become the mothers and 
queens of future hives. 

These are but a few examples of facts of which 
the whole animal world is full, presenting, as it 
does, one vast series of adjustments between bodily 
Organs and corresponding instincts. But this ad- 
justment would be useless unless it were part of 
another adjustment between the instincts and 
perceptions of animals and those facts and forces 
of surrounding Nature which are related to them, 
and to the whole cycle of things of which they 
form a part. In those instinctive actions of the 
lower animals which involve the most distant and 
the most complicated anticipations, it is clear that 
the prevision which is involved is a prevision 
which is not in the animals themselves. They 
appear to be guided by some simple appetite, by 
an odour or a taste, and they have obviously no 
more consciousness of the ends to be subserved, 



The Unity of Adjustment All-embracing. 79 



or of the mechanism by which they are secured, 
than the suckling has of the processes of nutrition. 
The path along which they walk is a path which 
they did not engineer. It is a path made for them, 
and they simply follow it. But the propensities 
and tastes and feelings which make them follow it, 
and the Tightness of its direction towards the ends 
to be attained, do constitute a Unity of Adjustment 
which binds together the whole world of Life, and 
the whole inorganic world on which living things 
depend. 

I have called this adjustment mechanical, and so, 
in the strictest sense, it is. We must take care, 
however, not to let our conceptions of the realities 
of Nature be rendered indistinct by those elements 
of metaphor which abound in language. These 
elements, indeed, when kept in their proper places, 
are not only the indispensable auxiliaries of thought, 
but they represent those perceptions of the mind 
which are the highest and the most absolutely true. 
They are the recognition — often the unconscious 
recognition— of the central Unities of Nature. 
Nevertheless, they are the prolific source of error 
when not closely watched. Because all the func- 
tions and phenomena of Life appear to be strictly 
connected with an Apparatus, and may therefore be 
regarded as brought about by adjustments which 
are mechanical, therefore it has been concluded that 



So 



The Unity of Nature. 



those phenomena, even the most purely mental, are 
mechanical in the same sense in which the work is 
called mechanical which human machines perform. 
Are not all animals " Automata ? " Are they not 
" mere machines?" This question has been re- 
vived from age to age since philosophy began, 
and 'has been discussed in our own time with all 
the aid which the most recent physiological experi- 
ment can afford. It is a question of extreme inte- 
rest in its bearing on our present subject. The 
sense in which, and the degree to which, all mental 
phenomena are founded on, and are the result of 
mechanical adjustments, is a question of the highest 
interest and importance. The phenomena of In- 
stinct, as exhibited in the lower animals, are un- 
doubtedly the field of observation in which the 
solution of this question may best be found, and I 
cannot better explain the aspect in which it pre- 
sents itself to me, than by discussing it in connec- 
tion with certain exhibitions of Animal Instinct 
which I had occasion to observe during the spring 
and summer of 1874. They were not uncommon 
cases. On the contrary, -they were of a kind of 
which the whole world is full. But not the less 
directly did they suggest all the problems under 
discussion, and not the less forcibly did they strike 
me with the admiration and the wonder which no 
familiarity can exhaust. 



CHAPTER III. 

Animal Instinct in its Relation to the Mind 
of Man. 

HP HE Dipper or Water-ousel (Cinclus aquaticus) 
is well known to Ornithologists as one of the 
most curious and interesting of British birds. Its 
special habitat is clear mountain streams. These 
it never leaves except to visit the lakes into which 
or from which they flow. Without the assistance of 
webbed feet, it has extraordinary powers of swim- 
ming and of diving — moving about upon and under 
the surface with more than the ease and dexterity 
of a fish — hunting alonp* the bottom as if it had no 
power to float — floating on the top as if it had no 
power to sink — now diving where the stream is 
smooth, now where it is quick and broken, and sud- 
denly reappearing perched on the summit of some 
projecting point. Its plumage is in perfect harmony 
with its haunts — dark, with a pure white breast, 
which looks exactly like one of the flashes of 
light so numerous in rapid streams, or one of the 

F 



82 



The Unity of Nature. 



little balls of foam which loiter among the stones. 
Its very song is set to the music of rapid waters. 
By careful stepping along the top of a river-bank 
one can often get quite close to the Dipper when it 
is singing, and the harmony of its notes with the 
tinkling of the stream is really curious. It sings too 
when all other birds but the Robin are silent — in 
the depth of winter when the stones on which it 
sits are circled and rimed with ice. No bird, 
perhaps, is more specially adapted to a very 
special home and very peculiar habits of life. The 
same species, or other forms so closely similar as 
to seem mere varieties, are found in almost every 
country of the world where there are clear mountain 
streams. And yet it is a species having no very 
near affinity with any other bird, and it constitutes 
by itself a separate genus. It is therefore a species 
of great interest to the Naturalist, and raises some 
of the most perplexing questions connected with the 
" Origin of Species." 

In 1874 a pair of these birds built their nest at 
Inveraray, in a hole in the wall of a small tunnel 
constructed to carry a rivulet under the walks of a 
pleasure ground. The season was - one of great 
drought, and the rivulet, during the whole time of 
incubation and of the growth of the young in the 
nest, was nearly entirely dry. One of the nestlings, 
-when almost fully fledged, was taken out by the hand 



Instinct Exhibited by a Young Water-Ousel. 83 



for examination, an operation which so alarmed the 
others that they darted out of the hole, and ran and 
fluttered down the tunnel towards its mouth. At 
that point a considerable pool of water had survived 
the drought, and lay in the paths of the fugitives. 
They did not at all appear to seek it ; on the con- 
trary, their flight seemed to be as aimless as that of 
any other fledgling would have been in the same 
predicament. But one of them stumbled into the 
pool. The effect was most curious. When the 
young bird touched the water, there was a moment 
of pause, as if the creature were surprised. Then 
instantly there seemed to wake within it the sense 
of its hereditary powers. Down it dived with all 
the facility of its parents, and the action of its wings 
under the water was a beautiful exhibition of the 
double adaptation to progression in two very dif- 
ferent elements, which is peculiar to the wings of 
most of the diving birds. The young Dipper was 
immediately lost to sight among some weeds, and 
so long did it remain under water, that I feared it 
must be drowned. But in due time it reappeared 
all right, and being recaptured, was replaced in the 
nest. 

Later in the season, on a secluded lake in one 
of the Hebrides, I observed a Dun-diver, or female 
of the Red-breasted Merganser (Mergus Serrator), 
with her brood of young ducklings. On giving 



The Unity of Nature. 



chase in the boat, we soon found that the young, 
although not above a fortnight old, had such extra- 
ordinary powers of swimming and diving, that it 
was almost impossible to capture them. The dis- 
tance they went under water, and the unexpected 
places in which they emerged, baffled all our efforts 
for a considerable time. At last one of the brood 
made for the shore, with the object of hiding 
among- the grass and heather which fringed the 
margin of the lake. We pursued it as closely as 
w r e could, but when the little bird gained the shore, 
our boat was still about twenty yards off.. Long 
drought had left a broad margin of small flat stones 
and mud between the water and the usual bank. 
I saw the little bird run up about a couple of 
yards from the water, and then suddenly disappear. 
Knowing what was likely to be enacted, I kept my 
eye fixed on the spot ; and when the boat was run 
upon the beach, I proceeded to find and pick up 
the chick. But on reaching the place of disappear- 
ance, no sign of the young Merganser was to be 
seen. The closest scrutiny, with the certain know- 
ledge that it was there, failed to enable me to 
detect it. Proceeding cautiously forwards, I soon 
became convinced that I had already overshot the 
mark ; and, on turning round, it was only to see the 
chick rise like an apparition from the stones, and 
dashing past the stranded boat, regain the lake, — - 



Art Inspired by Instinct in the Wild Duck. 85 



where, having now recovered its wind, it instantly- 
dived and disappeared. The tactical skill of the 
whole of this manoeuvre, and the success with which 
it was executed, were greeted with loud cheers 
from the whole party ; and our admiration was not 
diminished when we remembered that some two 
weeks before that time the little performer had 
been coiled up inside the shell of an egg, and that 
about a month before it was apparently nothing but 
a mass of albumen and of fatty oils. 

The third case of Animal Instinct which I shall 
here mention was of a different but of an equally 
common kind. In walking along the side of a river 
with overhanging banks, I came suddenly on a 
common Wild Duck (Anas Boschus), whose young 
were just out. Springing from under the bank, 
she fluttered out into the stream with loud cries 
and with all the struggles to escape of a helplessly 
wounded bird. To simulate the effects of suffering 
from disease, or from strong emotion, or from 
wounds upon the human frame, is a common neces- 
sity of the actor's art, and it is not often really 
well done. The tricks of the theatre are seldom 
natural, and it is not without reason that " theatrical" 
has become a proverbial expression for false and 
artificial representations of the realities of life. It 
was therefore with no small interest that on this, 
as on many other occasions, I watched the per- 



» 



86 



The Unity of Nature. 



fection of an art which Mrs. Sid dons might have 
envied. The laboured and half-convulsive flapping 
of the wings, the wriggling of the body, the straining 
of the neck, and the whole expression of painful and 
abortive effort, were really admirable. When her 
struggles had carried her a considerable distance, 
and she saw that they produced no effect in tempt- 
ing us to follow, she made resounding flaps upon 
the surface of the water, to secure that attention 
to herself which it was the great object of the 
manoeuvre to attract. Then rising suddenly in the 
air, she made a great circle round us, and return- 
ing to the spot, renewed her endeavours as before. 
It was not, however, necessary; for the separate 
instinct of the young in successful hiding effectually 
baffled all my attempts to discover them. 

I pass now from these exhibitions of Instinct in the 
class of birds to one which I observed in the class of 
insects during the recent winter, November 1882. 
It was in the beautiful Riviera, where insect life con- 
tinues much more active at that season than it can be 
anywhere in the north of Europe. But even there, 
although Bees are busy during the greater part of 
winter, and some of our own Sylviadae find an abun- 
dant living throughout the season, the Order of the 
Lepidoptera are generally dormant. I was surprised, 
therefore, late in the month of November, to see a 
large insect of this Order come from above the olive 



Instinctive Use of Mimicry by a Moth, 87 

trees overhead, with the wild, dashing flight of the 
larger Moths. Attracted apparently by a sheltered 
and sunny recess in which scarlet Geraniums and Big- 
nonias were in full flower, the Moth darted down- 
wards, and after a little hovering, settled suddenly 
on the bare ground underneath a Geranium plant. 
I then saw that it was a very handsome species, 
with an elaborate pattern of light and dark chocolate 
browns. But the margins of the upper or anterior 
wings, which were deeply waved in outline, had a 
lustrous yellow colour, like a brilliant gleam of 
light. In this position the Moth was a con- 
spicuous object. After resting for a few seconds, 
apparently enjoying the Sun, it seemed to notice 
some movement which gave it alarm. It then 
turned slightly round, gave a violent jerk to its 
wings, and instantly became invisible. If it had 
subsided into a hole in. the ground, it could not 
have more completely disappeared. As, however, 
my eyes were fixed upon the spot, I soon observed 
that all the interstices among the little clods around 
were full of withered and crumpled leaves of a deep 
blackish brown. I then further noticed that the 
spot where the Moth had sat was apparently occu- 
pied by one of these, and it then flashed upon me 
in a moment that I had before me one of the great 
wonders and mysteries of Nature. There are some 
forms of mimicry which are wholly independent of 



88 



The Unity of Nature. 



any action on the part of the animals themselves, 
and this kind of mimicry is especially common in 
this class of insects. They are often made of the 
shape and of the colour which are most like those 
of the surrounding objects in their habitat. They 
have nothing to do except to sit still, or perhaps to 
crouch. But there are other forms of mimicry in 
which the completeness of the deception depends 
on some co-operation of the animal's own will. 
This was one of these. The splendid margins of 
the upper wings, with the peculiar shape and their 
shining colour, had to be concealed ; and so, by 
an effort which evidently required the exertion of 
special muscles, these margins were somehow folded 
down — reverted — covered up, and thus hidden out 
of sight. The remainder of the wings, or the under 
surfaces which were now made uppermost, were so 
coloured and so crumpled up that they imitated 
exactly the dried and withered leaves around. 

And now I tried an experiment to test another 
feature in the wonderful instincts which are involved 
in all these operations. That feature is the implicit 
confidence in its success which is innate in all crea- 
tures furnished with any apparatus of concealment. 
I advanced in the full sunlight close up to the Moth 
— so close that I could see the prominent " beaded 
eyes," with the watchful look — and the roughened 
outlines of the thorax, which served to complete the 



Instinct the Foundation of Experience. 89 



illusion. So perfect was the deception, that I really 
could not feel absolutely confident that the black 
spot I was examining was what I believed it to be. 
Only one little circumstance reassured me. There 
was a small hole in the outer covering through 
which a mere point of the inner brilliant margin 
could be seen shining like a star. Certain now as 
to the identity of the Moth, I advanced still nearer, 
and finally I found that it was not till the point of 
a stick was used to touch and shake the earth on 
which it lay that the creature could believe that it 
was detected and in danger. Then in an instant, 
by movements so rapid as to escape the power of 
vision, the dried and crumpled leaf became a living 
Moth, with energies of flight defying all attempts at 
capture. 

Let us now look at the questions which these 
several exhibitions of Animal Instinct cannot fail to 
suggest ; and first let us take the case of the young 
Dipper. There was no possibility of imitation here. 
The rivulet beneath the nest, even if it had been 
visible to the nestlings, had been dry ever since 
they had been hatched. The river into which it 
ordinarily flowed was out of sight. The young 
Dippers never could have seen the parent birds 
either swimming or diving. This, therefore, is one 
of the thousand cases which have driven the " Expe- 
rience " school of philosophy to take up new ground. 



90 



The Unity of Nature. 



The young Dipper here cannot possibly have had 
any experience, either through the process of in- 
cipient effort, or through the process of sight and 
imitation. Nature is full of similar cases. In face 
of them it is now no longer denied that in all 
such cases " Innate Ideas " do exist, and that " Pre- 
established Harmonies " do prevail in Nature, These 
old doctrines, so long ridiculed and denied, have 
come to be admitted, and the new philosophy is 
satisfied with attempts to explain how these " Ideas " 
came to be innate, and how these Harmonies came 
to be pre-established. The explanation is, that 
though the efficiency of experience as the cause or 
source of Instinct must be given up as regards the 
individual, we may keep it as regards the race to 
which the individual belongs. The powers of 
swimming and diving, and the impulse to use them 
for their appropriate purpose, were indeed innate 
in the Dipper of 1874. But then they were not 
innate in its remote progenitors. They were ac- 
quired by those progenitors through gradual effort 
— the trying leading to success, and the success 
again leading to more trying — both together leading 
first to special faculty, then to confirmed habit, and 
then, by hereditary transmission, to instinct " orga- 
nised in the race." Well, but even if this be true, 
was not the disposition of the progenitors to make 
the first efforts in the direction of swimming and 



Instinct never Independent of Organic Apparatus. 9 1 



diving, and were not the Organs which enabled them 
to do so, as purely innate as the perfected instinct 
and the perfected Organs of the Dipper of to-day ? 
Did there ever exist in any former period of the 
world what, so far as I know, does certainly not 
exist now — any animal with dispositions to enter on 
a new career, thought of and imagined for the first 
time by itself unconnected with any Organs already 
fitted for and appropriate to the purpose ? Even the 
highest acquirements of the Dog, under highly artifi- 
cial conditions of existence, and under the guidance 
of persistent "interferences with Nature," are nothing 
but the special education of original instincts. In the 
almost human caution of the old and well-trained 
pointer when approaching game, we see simply a 
development of the habit of all predatory animals 
to pause when close upon an unseen prey — a pause 
requisite to verify the intimations of smell by the 
sense of sight, and also for preparing the final 
spring. It is true that Man " selects," but he can 
only select out of what is already there. The train- 
ing and direction which he gives to the promptings 
of Instinct may properly be described as the result 
of experience in the animal under instruction : and 
it is undoubtedly true that, within certain limits 
(which, however, are after all very narrow), these 
results do tend to become hereditary. But there is 
nothing really analogous in Nature to the artificial 



9 2 



The Unity of Nature, 



processes of training to which Man subjects the 
animals which are capable of domestication. Or if 
there be anything analogous — if animals by them- 
selves can school themselves by gradual effort into 
the development of new powers — if the habits and 
powers which are now purely innate and instinctive 
were once less innate and more deliberate — then it 
will follow that the earlier faculties of animals have 
been the higher, and that the later faculties are the 
lower in the scale of Intelligence. This is hardly 
consistent with the accepted idea of Evolution, — 
which is founded on the conception of an unfolding 
or development from the lower to the higher, from 
the simple to the complex, from the Instinctive to 
the Rational. My own belief is, that whatever of 
truth there is in the doctrine of Evolution is to be 
found in this conception, which, so far as we can 
see, does seem to be embodied in the history of 
■Organic Life. I can therefore see no li^ht in. this 
new explanation to account for the existence of 
instincts which are certainly antecedent to all in- 
dividual experience — the explanation, namely, that 
they are due to the experience of progenitors 
" organised in the race." It involves assumptions 
contrary to the analogies of Nature, and at variance 
with the fundamental facts, which are the best, and 
indeed the only, basis of the theory of Evolution. 
There is no probability — there is hardly any plausi- 



Instinct always Congenital and Innate. 



bility — in the supposition that experience has had, 
in past times, some connection with Instinct which 
it has ceased to have in the present day. The 
Uniformity of Nature has, indeed, often been as- 
serted in a sense in which it is not true, and used 
in support of arguments which it will not sustain. 
All things have certainly not continued as they 
are since the Beginning. There was a time when 
Animal Life, and with it Animal Instincts, began to 
be. But we have no reason whatever to suppose 
that the nature of Instinct then or since has ever 
been different from its nature now. On the con- 
trary, as we have in existing Nature examples 
of it in infinite variety, from the very lowest to 
the very highest forms of Organisation, and as 
the same phenomena are everywhere repeated, we 
have the best reason to conclude that, in the past, 
Animal Instinct has ever been what we now see it 
to be — congenital, innate, and wholly independent of 
experience. 

And indeed, when we come to think about it, we 
shall find that the theory of Experience assumes the 
pre-existence of the very powers for which it pro- 
fesses to account. The very lowest of the faculties 
by which experience is acquired is the faculty of 
imitation. But the desire to imitate must be as 
instinctive as the Organs are hereditary by which 
imitation is effected. Then follow in their order ail 



94- The Unity of Nature. 

the higher faculties by which the lessons of experi- 
ence are put together — so that what has been in the 
past is made the basis of anticipation as to what 
will be in the future. This is the essential process 
by which experience is acquired, and every step in 
that process assumes the pre-existence of mental 
tendencies and of mental powers which are purely 
instinctive and innate. To account for Instinct by 
experience is nothing but an Irish bull. It denies 
the existence of things which are nevertheless 
assumed in the very terms of the denial : it elevates 
into a cause that which must in its nature be a con- 
sequence, and a consequence, too, of the very cause 
which is denied. Congenital instincts, and heredi- 
tary powers, and pre-established harmonies, are the 
origin of all experience, and without them no one 
step in experience could ever be gained. The 
questions raised when a young Dipper, which had 
never before even seen water, dives and swims with 
perfect ease, are questions which the theory of 
organised experience does not even tend to solve ; 
on the contrary, it is a theory which leaves those 
questions precisely where they were, except in so 
far as it may tend to obscure them by obvious 
confusions of thought. 

Passing now from explanations which explain 
nothing, is there any light in the theory that 
animals are " Automata?" Was the young Dipper 



Living Automata Nonsense. 



95 



a diving machine ? It seems to me that there is at 
least a glimmer shining through this idea — a glim- 
mer as of a real light struggling through a thick 
fog. The fog arises out of the mists of language — 
the confounding and confusing of meanings literal 
with meanings metaphorical— the mistaking of par- 
tial for complete analogies. " Machine " is the 
word by which we designate those combinations of 
mechanical force which are contrived and put to- 
gether by Man to do certain things. One essential 
characteristic of them is that they belong to the 
world of the not-living ; they are destitute of 
that which we know as Life, and of all the attri- 
butes by which it is distinguished. Machines 
have no sensibility. When we say of anything 
that it has been done by a machine, we mean 
that it has been done by something which is not 
alive. In this literal signification it is therefore 
pure nonsense to say that anything living is a 
machine. It is simply a misapplication of lan- 
guage — to the extent of calling one thing by the 
name of another thing, and that other so different 
as to be its opposite or contradictory. 

There can be no reasoning, no clearing up of truth, 
unless we keep definite words for definite ideas. Or 
if the idea to which a given word has been appro- 
priated be a complex idea, and we desire to deal with 
one element only of the meaning, separated from the 



9 6 



The Unity of Nature. 



rest, then, indeed, we may continue to use the word 
for this selected portion of its meaning, provided 
always that we bear in mind what it is that we are 
doing. This may be, and often is, a necessary 
operation, for language is not rich enough- to furnish 
separate words for all the complex elements which 
enter into ideas apparently very simple ; and so of 
this word, machine, there is an element in its mean- 
ing which is always very important, which in common 
language is often predominant, and which we may 
legitimately choose to make exclusive of every other. 
This essential element in our idea of a machine is 
that its powers, whatever they may be, are derived, 
and not original. There may be great knowledge in 
the work done by a machine, but the knowledge is 
not in it. There may be great skill, but the skill 
is not in it ; great foresight, but the foresight is not 
in it ; in short, great exhibition of all the powers 
of Mind, but the mind is not in the machine itself. 
Whatever it does, is done in virtue of its construc- 
tion, which construction is due to a Mind which 
has designed it for the exhibition of certain powers 
and the performance of certain functions. These 
may be very simple, or they may be very compli- 
cated, but whether simple or complicated, the whole 
play of its operations is limited and measured by 
the intentions of its constructor. If that constructor 
be himself limited either in opportunity, or know- 



Animals regarded as Machines. 



97 



ledge, or in power, there will be a corresponding 
limitation in the things which he invents and 
makes. Accordingly, in regard to Man, he cannot 
make a machine which has any of the gifts and 
the powers of Life. He can construct nothing 
which has sensibility or consciousness, or any other 
of even the lowest attributes of living creatures. 
And this absolute destitution of even apparent 
originality in a machine — this entire absence of any 
share of consciousness, or of sensibility, or of Will — 
is one part of our very conception of it. But that 
other part of our conception of a machine, which 
consists in its relation to a contriver and construc- 
tor, is equally essential, and may, if we choose, be 
separated from the rest, and may be taken as 
representative of the whole. If, then, there be any 
Agency in Nature, or outside of it, which can con- 
trive and build up structures endowed with the 
gifts of Life, structures which shall not only digest, 
but which shall also feel and see, which shall be 
sensible of enjoyment from things conducive to their 
welfare, and of alarm on account of things which are 
dangerous to the same — then such structures have 
the same relation to that Agency which machines 
have to Man, and in this aspect it may be a legiti- 
mate figure of speech to call them living machines. 
What these machines do is different in kind from 
the things which human machines do ; but bot-h are 

G 



9& The Unity of Nature, 

alike in this — that whatever they do is done in 
virtue of their construction, and of the powers 
which have been given to them by the Mind which 
made them. 

Applying now this idea of a machine to the 
phenomena exhibited by the young Dipper, its 
complete applicability cannot be denied. In the 
first place, the young Dipper had a physical struc- 
ture adapted to diving. Its feathers were of a 
texture to throw off water, and the shower of 
pearly drops which ran off it, when it emerged 
from its first plunge, showed in a moment how 
different it was from other fledglings in its imper- 
viousness to wet. Water appeared to be its 
li native element " precisely in the same sense in 
which it is said to be the native element of a ship 
which has been built high in air, and of the not 
very watery materials of wood and iron. Water 
which it had never seen before, seemed to be the 
native element of the little bird in this sense, that 
it was so constructed as to be and to feel at home 
in it at once. Its " lines " had been laid down for 
progression both in air and water. It was launched 
with a motive-power complete - within itself, and 
with promptings sufficient for the driving of its 
own machinery. For the physical adaptation 
was obviously united with mental powers and 
■qualities which partook of the same preadjusted 



The Water-Ousel a Living Machine, 



99 



"harmony. These were as congenital as the tex- 
ture of its feathers or the structure of its wine. 
Its terror arose on seeing the proper objects of 
fear, although they had never been seen before, 
and no experience of injury had arisen. This 
terror prompted it to the proper methods of escape, 
and the knowledee how to use its faculties for this 
object was as intuitive as the apparatus for effect- 
ing it was hereditary. In this sense the Dipper 
was a living, breathing, seeing, fearing, and diving 
machine — ready made for all these purposes from 
the nest — as some other birds are even from their 
first exclusion from the eQfg. 

The case of the young Merganser is still more 
curious and instructive with reference to the same 
questions. The young of all the Anatidcs are born, 
like the gallinaceous birds, not naked or blind, as 
most others are, but completely equipped with a 
feathery down, and able to swim or dive as soon as 
they see the light. Moreover, the young of the- 
Merganser have the benefit of seeing from the 
■first the parent bird performing these operations, 
so that imitation may have some part in devel- 
oping, the perfection with which they are executed 
by the young. But the particular manoeuvre re- 
sorted to by the young bird which baffled our 
pursuit was a manoeuvre in which it could have 
had no instruction from example — the manoeuvre, 



IOO 



The Unity of Nature. 



namely, which consists in hiding not under any 
cover but by remaining perfectly motionless on 
the ground. This is a method of escape which 
cannot be resorted to successfully except by birds 
whose colour is adapted to the purpose by a close 
assimilation with the colouring of surrounding ob- 
jects. The old bird would not have been concealed 
on the same ground, and would never itself resort 
to the same method of escape. The young, there- 
fore, cannot have been instructed in it by the 
method of example. But the small size of the 
chick, together with its obscure and curiously 
mottled colouring, are specially adapted to this 
mode of concealment. The young of all birds 
which breed upon the ground are provided with 
a garment in such perfect harmony with surround- 
ing effects of light as to render this manoeuvre easy. 
It depends, however, wholly for its success upon 
absolute stillness. The slightest motion at once 
attracts the eye of any enemy which is searching 
for the young. And this absolute stillness must 
be preserved amidst all the emotions of fear and 
terror which the close approach of the object of 
alarm must, and obviously does, inspire. Whence 
comes this splendid, even if it be unconscious 
faith in the sufficiency of a defence which it must 
require such nerve and strength of Will to prac- 
tise ? No movement, not even the slightest, though 



Instinct an Inspiration involving Faith. 101 



the enemy should seem about to trample on it ; 
such is the terrible requirement of Nature — and 
by the child of Nature implicitly obeyed ! Here 
again, beyond all question, we have an instinct as 
much born with the creature as the harmonious 
tinting of its plumage — the external furnishing 
being inseparably united with the internal furnish- 
ing of Mind which enables the little creature in 
very truth to " w T alk by faith and not by sight." 
Is this automatonism ? Is this machinery ? Yes, 
undoubtedly in the sense explained before — that 
the instinct has been given to the bird in precisely 
the same sense in which its structure has been 
given to it — so that anterior to all experience, 
and without the aid of instruction or of example, 
it is inspired to act in this manner on the appro- 
priate occasion arising. 

Then, in the case of the Wild Duck, we rise to a 
yet higher form of Instinct, and to more complicated 
adaptations of congenital powers to the contingencies 
of the external world. It is not really conceivable 
that Wild Ducks have commonly many opportuni- 
ties of studying each other's action when rendered 
helpless by wounds. Nor is it conceivable that such 
study can have been deliberately made even when 
opportunities do occur. When one out of a flock is 
wounded all the others make haste to escape, and 
it is certain that this trick of imitated helplessness is 



102 



The Unity of Nature, 



practised by individual birds which can never have 
had any such opportunities at all. Moreover, there 
is one very remarkable circumstance connected with 
this instinct, which marks how much of knowledge 
and of reasoning is implicitly contained within it. 
As against Man the manoeuvre is not only useless 
but it is injurious. When a man sees a bird resort- 
ing to this imitation, he may be deceived for a 
moment, as I have myself been ; but his knowledge 
and experience and his reasoning faculty soon tell 
him from a combination of circumstances that it is 
merely the usual deception. To Man, therefore, it 
has the opposite effect of revealing the proximity 
of the young brood, which would not otherwise be 
known. I have repeatedly been led by it to the dis- 
covery of the chicks. Now, the most curious fact of 
all is that this distinction between Man and other 
predacious animals is recognised and reflected in the 
instinct of birds. The manoeuvre of counterfeiting 
helplessness is very rarely resorted to except when 
a Dog is present.* Dogs are almost uniformly de- 
ceived by it. They never can resist the temptation 
presented by a bird which flutters apparently help- 
less just in front of their nose. It is, therefore, 
almost always successful in drawing them off, and 

* I have since seen it resorted to by the American Merganser, oa 
the Restigouche River, in Canada, when the object of alarm was a 
barge " poled " or " punted " down the stream. It evidently gave the 
impression of an enemy chasing the young on the water. 



Knowledge Implicit in Instinct. 103 



so rescuing the young from danger. But it is 
the sense of smell, not the sense of sight, which 
makes Dogs so specially dangerous. The instinct 
which has been given to birds seems to cover and 
include the knowledge that as the sense of smell 
does not exist to the like effect in Man, the mere 
concealment of the young from sight is ordinarily, 
as regards him, sufficient for their protection : and 
yet I have on one occasion seen the trick resorted 
to when Man ,only was the source of danger, and 
this by a species of bird which does not habitually 
practise it, and which can have had neither indivi- 
dual nor ancestral experience. This was the case 
of a Blackcap {Sylvia Atricapilla), which fell to the 
ground from a bush as if wounded, in order to dis- 
tract attention from its nest. 

If now we examine, in the light of our own Reason, 
all the elements of knowledge or of intellectual per- 
ception upon which the instinct of the Wild Duck is 
founded, and all of which, as existing somewhere, it 
undoubtedly reflects, we shall soon see how various 
and extensive these elements of knowledge are. 
First, there is the knowledge that the cause of the 
alarm is a carnivorous animal. On this fundamental 
point no creature is ever deceived. The youngest 
chick knows a Hawk, and the dreadful form fills it 
with instant terror. Next, there is the knowledge 
that Dogs and other carnivorous quadrupeds have 



io4 The Unity of Nature. 

the sense of smell, as an additional element of danger 
to the creatures on which they prey. Next, there is 
the knowledge that the Dog, not being itself a flying 
animal, has sense enough not to attempt the pursuit 
of prey which can avail itself of this sure and easy 
method of escape. Next, there is the conclusion 
from all this knowledge, that if the Dog is to be in- 
duced to chase, it must be led to suppose that the 
power of flight has been somehow lost. And then 
there is the further conclusion, that this can only be 
done by such an accurate imitation of a disabled bird 
as shall deceive the enemy into a belief in the pos- 
sibility of capture. And lastly, there are all the 
powers of memory and the qualities of imagination 
which enable good acting to be performed. All 
this reasoning and all this knowledge is certainly 
involved in the action of the bird-mother, just as 
certainly as reasoning and knowledge of a much 
profounder kind is involved in the structure or ad- 
justment of the Organic machinery by which and 
through which the action is itself performed. 

In the case of the Moth upon the Riviera, we 
have the same general principles involved and ren- 
dered in some respects more remarkable, in propor- 
tion to the much lower Intelligence which belongs to 
the Class of insects as compared with the Class of 
birds. But the law is the same in both cases — the 
law, namely, of a close and perfect correspondence 



Reasoning Implicit in Instinct, 105 



between the physical machinery for any given pur- 
pose, and the psychological endowments which 
enable that machinery to be properly applied. It 
surprised me to see this Moth lighting on the bare 
ground underneath the leaves and flowers which 
seemed to attract its attention. But if this choice 
and selection had not been made, and if it were not 
habitually made by this species of Moth, its ap- 
paratus of disguise would have been useless for the 
intended purpose. The Moth might, indeed, in any 
situation exert the muscles which reverted the wing, 
and which degraded the whole appearance of its 
body into the semblance of dead and rotten vegeta- 
tion. But then, in every situation except that actually 
chosen, such an object would not have evaded notice, 
but on the contrary would have attracted it. And 
therefore it was that the Moth passed by all the 
beautiful leaves and flowers, and settled rather on 
a clod. But this " therefore," with all the train of 
reasoning which the choice involved, we cannot sup- 
pose to have existed consciously in the Moth. Yet 
that it existed somewhere is as certain as the exis- 
tence of the Organic structure by which the disguise 
was rendered possible, or the existence of the Instinct 
in the creature, which is at once the index and the 
consummation of the whole arrangement. 

There is unquestionably a sense, and a very im- 
portant sense, in which all these wonderful opera- 



io6 



The Unity of Nature. 



tions of Instinct are " automatic." The intimate 
knowledge of physical and of physiological laws — the 
knowledge even of the mental qualities and disposi- 
tions of other animals — and the processes of reason- 
ing by which advantage is taken of these, — this 
knowledge and this reasoning cannot, without mani- 
fest absurdity, be attributed to the birds themselves. 
This is admitted at least as regards the birds of the 
present day. But surely the absurdity is quite as 
great if this knowledge and reasoning, or any part 
of it, be attributed to birds of a former generation. 
In the past history of the species there may have 
been change — there may have been development. 
But there is not the smallest reason to believe that 
the progenitors of any bird or of any beast, however 
different in form, have ever founded on deliberate 
effort the instincts of their descendants. All the 
knowledge and all the resources of Mind which is 
involved in these instincts is a reflection of some 
Agency which is outside the creatures which exhibit 
them. In this respect it may be said with truth that 
they are machines. But then they are machines 
with this peculiarity, that they not only reflect, but 
also in various measures and degrees -partake of 
the attributes of Mind. It is always by some one or 
other of these attributes that they are guided — by 
fear, or by desire, or by affection, or by mental 
impulses which go straight to the results of reason- 



Doctrine of Descartes Misconceived. 107 



ing without its processes. That all these mental 
attributes are connected with a physical Organism 
which is constructed on mechanical principles, is not 
a matter of speculation. It is an obvious and 
acknowledged fact. The question is not whether, 
in this sense, animals are machines, but whether the 
work which has been assigned to them does or does 
not partake in various measures and degrees of the 
various qualities which we recognise in ourselves 
as the qualities of sensation, of consciousness, and 
of Will. 

On this matter it seems clear to me that in some 
recent discussions the doctrine of Descartes has been 
seriously misconceived. It is true that a passage 
has been quoted '* as representing the view of 
"orthodox Cartesians," in which it is asserted that 
animals " eat without pleasure and cry without pain," 
and that they "desire" nothing as well as "know" 
nothing. But this passage is quoted, not from 
Descartes, but from Malebranche. Malebranche 
was a great man ; but on this subject he was the 
disciple and not the master ; and it seems almost a 
law that no utterance of original genius can long 
escape the fate of being travestied and turned to 
nonsense by those who take it up at second hand. 
Descartes' letter to Moore of the 5th February 1649, 
proves conclusively that he fully recognised in the 

* By Professor Huxley. 



io8 



The Unity of Nature. 



lower animals the existence of all the affections of 
Mind except "Thought" (la Pense'e), or Reason 
properly so called. He ascribes to them the mental 
emotions of fear, of anger, and of desire, as well as 
all the sensations of pleasure and of pain. What he 
means by Thought is clearly indicated in the passage 
in which he points to Language as. the peculiar pro- 
duct and the sole index of Thought — Language, of 
course, taken in its broadest sense, signifying any 
system of signs by which general or abstract ideas 
are expressed and communicated. This, as Des- 
cartes truly says, is never wanting even in the 
lowest of men, and is never present in the highest 
of the brutes. But he distinctly says that the lower 
animals, having the same Organs of sight, of hearing, 
of taste, &c, with ourselves, have also the same 
sensations, as well as the same affections of aneer, 
of fear, and of desire — affections which, being 
mental, he ascribes to a lower kind or class of Soul, 
an "ame corporelle." Descartes, therefore, was 
not guilty of confounding the two elements of 
meaning which are involved in the word machine — 
that element which attaches to all machines made 
by Man as consisting of dead non-sentient matter — 
and that other element of meaning which may be 
legitimately attached to structures which have been 
made, not to simulate, but really to possess all the 
essential properties of Life. "II faut pourtant re- 



False Conclusion from Reflex Nerve- Action. 109 



marquer," says Descartes, emphatically; "que je 
parle de la pensee, non de la vie, ou de sentiment" * 
The experiments quoted by Professor Huxley and 
by other Physiologists, on the phenomena of vivisec- 
tion, and especially on what is called the " reflex 
action " of living nerve-tissues, cannot alter or modify 
the general conclusions which have long been reached 
on the unquestionable connection between all the 
functions of Life and the mechanism of the body. 
The auestion remains whether the ascertainment of 
this connection in its details can alter our conceptions 
of what Life and sensation are. No light is thrown 
on this question by cutting out from an Organism 
certain parts- of the machinery which are known to 
be* the seat of consciousness and of Will, and then 
finding that the animal • is still capable of certain 
movements which are usually indicative of sensation 
and of purpose. Surely the reasoning is bad which 
argues that because a given movement goes on after 
the animal has been mutilated, this movement must 
therefore continue to possess all the same elements 
of character which accompanied it when the animal 
was complete. And not only is the reasoning bad ? 
but as a matter of fact the conclusion has been 
proved to be erroneous. Farther investigations 
have shown that when the cerebral hemispheres 
have been removed, the " reflex action " in a frog's 

* CEuvres de Descartes (Cousin), vol. x. p. 205 et seq. 



I IO 



The Unity of Nature. 



leg acquires a new character. It becomes a mere 
result of Physical Causation, and is consequently as 
certain and inevitable as the action of a coiled spring. 
Accordingly it can be predicted and foreseen with 
certainty. In short, the mental element has been 
eliminated along with that part of the machinery 
which is the Organ of consciousness and Will. But 
when that part of the machinery remains untouched, 
then " reflex action " loses its character of necessity 
as the result of mere mechanical causation. It can- 
not be predicted with certainty, because although 
the " stimulus " may be the same, and the animal 
impulse may be the same, there is a controlling 
apparatus to which has been given the free and 
incalculable power of resisting both stimulus and 
impulse. Both parts of the apparatus are equally 
machinery. But the one has a mental function, and 
the other has a function purely physical. # 

The character of purpose in one sense or another 
belongs to all Organic movements whatever — to those 
which are independent of conscious sensation, or of 
the Will, as well as to those which are voluntary 
and intentional. The only difference between the 
two classes of movement is that in the case of one 
of them the purpose is wholly outside the animal, 
and that in the case of the other class of movement 
the animal has faculties which make it, however 

* Foster's < : Text-Book of Physiology/' p. 557. 



Conscious Sensation Dependent on Structure. 1 1 1 



indirectly, a conscious participant or agent in the 
purpose, or in some part of the purpose, to be sub- 
served. The action of the heart in animals is as 
certainly "purposive" in its character as the act 
of eating and deglutition. In the one the animal is 
wholly passive — has no sensation, no consciousness, 
however dim. In the other movement the animal 
is an active agent, is impelled to it by desires which 
are in the nature of mental affections, and receives 
from it the appropriate pleasure which belongs to 
consciousness and sensation. These powers them- 
selves, however, depend, each of them, on certain 
bits and parts of the animal mechanism ; and if these 
parts can be separately injured or destroyed, it is 
intelligible enough that consciousness and sensation 
may be severed for a time from the movements 
which they ordinarily accompany and direct. The 
success of such an experiment may teach us much 
on the details of a general truth which has long been 
known — that conscious sensation is, so far as our 
experience goes, inseparably dependent upon the 
mechanism of an Organic structure. But it cannot 
in the slightest degree change or modify our con- 
ception of what conscious sensation in itself is. It 
is mechanical exactly in the same sense in which we 
have long known it to be so — that is to say, it is the 
result of Life working in and through a structure 



112 



The Unity of Nature. 



which has been made to exhibit and embody cer- 
tain special gifts and powers. 

Considering now that the body of Man is one in 
structure with the body of all vertebrate animals 
• — considering that, as we rise from the lowest of 
these to him who is the highest, we see this same 
structure elaborated into closer and closer likeness, 
until every part corresponds, bone to bone, tissue 
to tissue, organ to organ — I cannot doubt that Man 
is a machine, precisely in the same sense in which 
animals are machines. If it is no contradiction in 
terms to speak of a machine which has been made 
to feel and to see, and to hear and to desire, neither 
need there be any contradiction in terms in speak- 
ing of a machine which has been made to think, 
and to reflect, and to reason. These are, indeed, 
powers so much higher than the others that they 
may be considered as different in kind. But this 
difference, however great it may be, whether we 
look at it in its practical results, or as a question 
of classification, is certainly not a difference which 
throws any doubt upon the fact that all these 
higher powers are, equally with the lowest, de- 
pendent in this world on special arrangements in a 
material Organism. It seems to me that the very 
fact of the question being raised whether Man can 
be called a machine in the same sense as that in 
which alone the lower animals can properly be so 



All Faculties Depend on Sir tic lure. i r 3 

described, is a proof that the questioner believes 
the lower animals to be machines in a sense in 
which it is not true. Such manifestations of mental 
attributes as they display are the true and veri- 
table index of powers which are really by them 
possessed and enjoyed. The notion that, because 
these powers depend on an Organic Apparatus, they 
are therefore not what they seem to be, is a mere 
confusion of thought. On the other hand, when 
this comes to be thoroughly understood, the notion 
that Man's peculiar powers are lowered and dis- 
honoured when they are conceived to stand in any 
similar relation to the body, must be equally aban- 
doned, as partaking of the same fallacy. If the 
sensation of pleasure and of pain, and the more 
purely mental manifestations of fear and of affec- 
tion, have in the lower animals some inseparable 
connection with an Organic Apparatus, I do not see 
why we should be jealous of admitting that the still 
higher powers of self-consciousness and Reason have 
in Man a similar connection with the same kind of 
mechanism. The nature of this connection in itself 
is equally mysterious, and, indeed, inconceivable in 
either case. As a matter of fact, we have precisely 
the same evidence as to both. If painful and 
pleasurable emotions can be destroyed by the cut- 
ting of a nerve, so also can the powers of Memory 
and of Reason be destroyed by any injury or disease 

H 



ii4 



The Unity of Nature. 



which affects some bits of the substance of the 
brain. 

If, however, the fact of this mysterious connection 
be so interpreted as to make us alter our conceptions 
of what self-consciousness, and Reason, and all mental 
manifestations in themselves are, then indeed we 
may well be jealous — not of the facts, but of the illo- 
gical use which is often made of them. Self-con- 
sciousness and Reason and Affection, and Fear, and 
Pain, and Pleasure, are in themselves exactly what 
we have always known them to be ; and no discovery 
as to the physical Apparatus with which they are 
somehow connected can throw the smallest obscu- 
rity on the criteria by which they are to be iden- 
tified as so many different phenomena of Mind. 
Our old knowledge of the work done is in no way 
altered by any new information as to the Apparatus 
by which it is effected. This is the error com- 
mitted by those who think they can found a new 
Psychology on the knife. They seem to think that 
Sensation and Memory, and Reasoning and Will, 
become somethmg different from that which hitherto 
we have known them to be, when we have found 
out that each of these powers may have some 
special " seat " or " organ " in the body. This, 
however, is a pure delusion. The known element 
in Psychology is always the nature of the mental 
faculty ; the unknown element is always the nature 



Man a Reasoning and Self- Conscious Machine. 1 1 5 



of its connection with any Organ. We know the 
operations of our own minds with a fulness and 
reality which does not belong to any other know- 
ledge whatever. We do not know the bond of 
union between these operations and the brain, 
except as a sort of external and wholly unintelli- 
gible fact. Remembering all this, then, we need 
not fear or shrink from the admission that Man is 
a' reasoning and self-conscious machine, just in the 
same sense in which the lower animals are machines 
which have been made to exhibit and possess cer- 
tain mental faculties of a lower class. 

But what of this ? What is the value of this 
conclusion ? Its value would be small indeed if this 
conception of ourselves as machines could be de- 
fended only as a harmless metaphor. But there is 
far more to be said for it and about it than this. 
The conception is one which is not only harmless, 
but profoundly true, as all metaphors are when they 
are securely rooted in the Homologies of Nature. 
There is much to be learnt from that aspect of Mind 
in which we regard its powers as intimately con- 
nected with a material Apparatus, and from that 
aspect of our own bodies in which they are regarded 
as one in structure with the bodies of the brutes. 
Surely it would be a strange object of ambition to 
try to think that we are not included in the vast 
System of Adjustment which we have thus traced in 



The Unity of Natter e. 



them ; that our nobler faculties have no share in the 
secure and wonderful guarantee which it affords for 
the truthfulness of all mental gifts. It is well that 
we should place a high estimate on the superiority 
of the powers which we possess ; and that the dis- 
tinction, with all its consequences, between self- 
conscious Reason and the comparatively simple 
perceptions of the Beasts, should be ever kept in 
view. But it is not well that We should omit from 
that estimate a common element of immense im- 
portance which belongs to both, and the value of 
which becomes immeasurably greater in its connec- 
tion with our special gifts. That element is the 
element of Adjustment — the element which suggests 
the idea of an Apparatus — the element which consti- 
tutes all our higher faculties the index and the result 
of a Pre-adjusted Harmony. In the light of this con- 
ception we can see a new meaning in our " place in 
Nature ; " that place which, so far as our bodily Organs 
are concerned, assigns to us simply a front rank among 
the creatures which are endowed with Life. It is in 
virtue of that place and association that we may be 
best assured that our special gifts have the same 
relation to the higher realities of Nature which the 
lower faculties of the Beasts have to the lower reali- 
ties of the physical world. Whatever we have that 
is peculiar to ourselves is built up on the same firm 
foundation on which all Animal Instinct rests. 



Mind in Man includes Instinct. 



117 



It is often said that we can never really know 
what unreasoning Instinct is, because we can never 
enter into an animal mind, and see what is work- 
ing there. Men are so apt to be arrogant in philo- 
sophy that it seems almost wrong to deprecate 
even any semblance of the consciousness of ignor- 
ance. But it were much to be desired that the 
modesty of Philosophers would come in the right 
places. I hold that we can know, and can almost 
thoroughly understand, the instincts of the lower 
animals ; and this, for the best of all reasons, that 
we are ourselves animals, whatever more ;— having, 
to a large extent, precisely the same instincts, with 
the additional power of looking down upon ourselves 
in this capacity from a higher elevation to which we 
can ascend at will. Not only are our bodily func- 
tions precisely similar to those of the lower animals, 
— some, like the beating of the heart, being purely 
"automatic" or involuntary— others being partially, 
and others again being wholly, under the control of the 
Will, — but many of our sensations and emotions are 
obviously the same with the sensations and emotions 
of the lower animals, connected with precisely the 
same machinery, presenting precisely the same phe- 
nomena, and recognisable by all the same criteria. 

It is true that many of our actions become instinc- 
tive and mechanical only as the result of a previous 
intellectual operation of the self-conscious or reason- 



1 1 8 The Unity of Nature. 
_ p 

ing kind. And this, no doubt, is the origin of the 
dream that all Instinct, even in the animals, has had 
the same origin ; a dream due to the exaggerated 
"Anthropomorphism" of those very philosophers 
who are most apt to denounce this sort of error 
in others. But Man has many instincts like the 
animals, to which no such origin in personal experi- 
ence or in previous reasoning can be assigned. For 
not only in earliest infancy, but throughout life, we 
do innumerable things to which we are led by purely 
organic impulse ; things which have indeed a reason 
and a use, but a reason which we never know, and a 
use which we never discern, till we come to "think." 
And how different this process of "thinking" is we 
know likewise from our own experience. In con- 
templating the phenomena of reasoning and of con- 
scious deliberation, it really seems as if it were 
impossible to sever it from the idea of a double 
Personality. Tennyson's poem of the " Two Voices" 
is no poetic exaggeration of the duality of which we 
are conscious when we attend to the mental opera- 
tions of our own most complex nature. It is as if 
there were within us one Being always receptive of 
suggestions, and always responding in the form cf 
impulse — and another Being capable of passing these 
suggestions in review before it, and of allowing or 
disallowing the impulses to which they give rise. 
There is a profound difference between creatures 



The " Two Voices" in Man. 119 

-«f 

in which one only of these voices speaks, and Man, 

whose ears are, as it were, open to them both. The 
things which we do in obedience to the lower and 
simpler voice are indeed many, various, and full of 
a true and wonderful significance. But the things 
which we do and the affections which we cherish, 
in obedience to the higher voice, have a rank, a 
meaning, and a scope which is all their own. 
There is no indication in the lower animals of 
this double Personality. There is no indication that 
they hear any voice but one ; and there is every 
indication that in obeying it the whole law of their 
Being is perfectly fulfilled. This it is which gives 
such restfulness to Nature, whose abodes are indeed 
what Wordsworth calls them — 

"Abodes where Self-disturbance hath no part." 

On the other hand, the double Personality, the pre- 
sence of " Two Voices," is never wholly wanting 
even in the most degraded of human Beings — their 
thoughts everywhere " accusing or else excusing 
one another." 

Knowing, therefore, in ourselves both these 
kinds of operation, we can measure the difference 
between them, and we can thoroughly understand 
how animals may be able to do all that they 
actually perform, without ever passing through 
the processes of argument by which we reach the 



120 



The Unity of Nature. 



conclusions of conscious Reason and of moral Ob- 
ligation. Moreover, seeing and feeling the dif- 
ference, we can see and feel the relations which 
obtain between the two classes of mental work. 
The plain truth is, that the higher and more 
complicated work is done, and can only be done 
in this life, with the materials supplied by the 
lower and simpler tools. Nay, more, the very 
highest and most inspiring mental processes, rest 
upon the lower, as a building rests upon its 
foundation-stones. The impressions and concep- 
tions which belong to Instinct are like the rude but 
massive substructions from which some great 
Temple springs. Not only is the impulse, the 
disposition, and the ability to reason as purely 
intuitive and congenital in Man as the disposi- 
tion to eat, but the fundamental axioms on which 
all reasoning rests are, and can only be, intuitively 
perceived. This, indeed, is the essential character 
of all the axioms or self-evident propositions which 
are the basis of reasoning, that the truth of them 
is perceived by an act of apprehension, which, if 
it depends on any process, depends on a process 
unconscious, involuntary, and purely automatic. 
But this is the definition, the only definition, of 
Instinct or Intuition. All conscious reasoning thus 
starts from the data which this great Faculty 
supplies ; and all our trust and confidence in the 



Adjustment in Mind a Ground of Confidence. 121 



results of reasoning must depend on our trust 
and confidence in the Adjusted Harmony which has 
been established between Instinct and the truths of 
Nature. 

Not only is the idea of mechanism consistent with 
this confidence, but it is inseparable from it. No 
firmer ground for that confidence can be given us in 
thought than this conception, — that as the eye of 
sense is a mechanism specially adjusted to receive 
the Jight of heaven, so is the mental eye a mechan- 
ism specially adjusted to perceive those realities 
which are in the nature of necessary and eternal 
Truth. Moreover, the same conception helps us to 
understand the real nature of those limitations upon 
our faculties which curtail their range, and which 
yet, in a sense, we may be said partially to overpass 
in the very act of becoming conscious of them. 
We see it to be a great law prevailing in the 
instincts of the lower animals, and in our own, 
that they are true not only as guiding the animal 
rightly to the satisfaction of whatever appetite is 
immediately concerned, but true also as ministering 
to ends of which the animal knows nothing, although 
they are ends of the highest importance, both in 
its own economy and in the far-off economies of 
Creation. In direct proportion as our own minds 
and intellects partake of the same nature, and are 
founded on the same principle of Adjustment, we 



122 The Unity of Nature. 



may feel assured that the same law prevails in 
their nobler work and functions. And the glorious 
law is no less than this — that the work of Instinct 
is true not only for the short way it goes, but for 
that infinite distance into which it leads in a right 
direction. 

I know no argument better fitted than this to 
dispel the sickly dreams, the morbid misgivings, of 
the Agnostic. Nor do I know of any other con- 
ception as securely founded on science, properly 
so called, which better serves to render intelligible 
and to bring within the familiar analogies of Nature 
those higher and rarer mental gifts which we know 
as Genius, and even that highest and rarest of 
all which we understand as Inspiration. That the 
human Mind is always in some degree, and that 
certain individual minds have been in a special 
degree, reflecting surfaces, as it were, for the veri- 
ties of the unseen and eternal world, is a concep- 
tion having all the characters of coherence which 
assure us of its harmony with the general constitu- 
tion and the common course of things. 

And so this doctrine of Animal Automatism — 
the notion that the Mind of Man is indeed a struc- 
ture and a mechanism — a notion which is held 
over our heads as a terror and a doubt — becomes, 
when closely scrutinised, the most comforting and 
reassuring of all conceptions. No stronger assur- 



Physical Structure and Freedom of the Will, 123 



ance can be given us that our Faculties, when 
rightly used, are Powers on which we can indeed 
rely. It reveals what may be called the strong 
physical foundations on which the truthfulness of 
Reason rests. And more than this— it clothes with 
the like character of trustworthiness every instinc- 
tive and intuitive affection of the human soul. It 
roots the reasonableness of Faith in our conviction 
of the Unities of Nature. It tells us that as we 
know the instincts of the lower animals to be the 
index and the result of Laws which are out of sight 
to them, so also have our own higher instincts the 
same relation to Truths which are of corresponding 
dignity and of corresponding scope. 

Nor can this conception of the Mind of Man 
being connected with an adjusted mechanism cast, 
as has been suggested, any doubt on the freedom 
of the Will — such as by the direct evidence of 
consciousness, we know that freedom to be. This 
suggestion is simply a repetition of the same in- 
veterate confusion of thought which has been 
exposed before. The question what our powers 
are is in no way affected by the admission or 
discovery that they are all connected with an 
Apparatus. Consciousness does not tell us that we 
stand unrelated to the System of things of which 
we form a part. We dream — or rather we simply 



124 



The Unity of Nature. 



rave — if we think we are free to choose among 
things which are not presented to our choice, — or 
if we think that choice itself can be free from 
motives, — or if we think that we can find any motive 
outside the number of those to which by the struc- 
ture of our Mind and of its Organ we have been 
made accessible. The only freedom of which we 
are really conscious is freedom from compulsion in 
choosing among things which are presented to our 
choice, — consciousness also attesting the fact that 
among those things some are coincident and some 
are not coincident with acknowledged Obligation. 
This, and all other direct perceptions, are not 
weakened but confirmed by the doctrine that our 
minds are connected with an Adjusted Mechanism. 
Because the first result of this conception is to 
establish the evidence of consciousness when given 
under healthy conditions, and when properly ascer- 
tained, as necessarily the best and the nearest 
representation of the truth. This it does in recog- 
nising ourselves, and all the faculties we possess, 
to be nothing but the result and index .of an Adjust- 
ment contrived by and reflecting the Mind which 
is supreme in Nature. We are derived and not 
original. We have been created, or — if any one 
likes the phrase better — we have been " evolved ; " 
not, however, out of nothing, nor out of confusion, 



Conscioitsness of Freedom Warranted, 125 



nor out of lies, — but out of " Nature," which is but 
a word for the whole Sum and System of intelligible 
things — the embodiment of all Order, the expres- 
sion of all Truth — the issue of the Fountain in 
which all fulness dwells. 



CHAPTER IV. 

On the Limits of Human Knowledge considered 
with Reference to the Unity of Nature. 

y^ND yet, although it is to Nature in this highest 
and widest sense that we belong — although 
it is out of this fountain that we have come, and 
it is out of its fulness that we have received all 
that we have and are, men have doubted, and will 
* doubt again, whether we can be sure of anything 
concerning it. 

If this terrible misgiving had affected individual 
minds alone in moments of weariness and despair, 
there would have been little to say about it. Such 
moments may come to all of us, and the distrust 
which they leave behind them may be the sorest of 
human trials. It is no unusual result of abortive 
yet natural effort, and of innate yet baffled curiosity. 
But this doubt, which is really nothing more than 
a morbid effect of weakness and fatigue, has been 



The Doubt of the Agnostic, 



127 



embraced as a doctrine and systematised into a 
Philosophy. Nor can it be denied that there are 
some partial aspects of our knowledge in which its 
very elements seem to dissolve and disappear under 
the power of self-analysis, so that the sum of it is 
reduced to little more than a consciousness of i^nor- 
ance. All that we know of Matter is so different 
from all that we are conscious of in Mind, that the 
relations between the two are really incomprehen- 
sible and inconceivable to us. Hence this relation 
constitutes a region of darkness in which it is easy 
to lose ourselves in an abyss of utter scepticism. 
What proof have we — it has been often asked — 
that the -mental impressions we derive from objects 
are in any way like the truth ? We know only the 
phenomena, not the reality of things. We are 
conversant with things as they appear, not with 
things as they are "in themselves." What, proof 
have we that ^ these phenomena give us any real 
knowledge of the truth ? How, indeed, is it pos- 
sible that knowledge so "relative" and so "con- 
ditioned " — relative to a mind so limited, and 
conditioned by senses which tell us of nothing but 
sensations — how can such knowledge be accepted 
as substantial? Is it not plain that our conceptions 
of Creation and of a Creator are all mere " Anthro- 
pomorphism ? " Is it not our own shadow that 
we are always chasing? Is it not a mere bigger 



I2S 



The Unity of Nature. 



'image of ourselves to which we are always bowing 
down ? 

It is upon suggestions such as these that the 
Agnostic philosophy, or the philosophy of Nescience, 
is founded — the doctrine that, concerning all the 
highest problems which it both interests and con- 
cerns us most to know, we never can have any 
knowledge or any rational and assured belief. 

It may be well to come to the consideration of 
this doctrine along those avenues of approach which 
start from the conception we have now gained of 
the Unity of Nature. 

Nothing, certainly, in the human Mind is more 
wonderful than this — that it is conscious of its own 
limitations. For it is to be observed that such con- 
sciousness would be impossible if these limitations 
were in their nature absolute. The bars which we 
feel so much, and against which we so often beat 
in vain, are bars which could not be felt at all 
unless there were something in us which seeks a 
wader scope. It is as if these bars were a limit of 
opportunity rather than a boundary of power. No 
absolute limitation of mental faculty ever is, or ever 
could be, felt by the creatures whom it affects. Of 
this we have abundant evidence in the lower animals, 
and in those lower faculties of our own nature which 
are of like kind to theirs. Our bodily appetites 
can seek nothing beyond or beside the objects of 



Limitations of Mind and Spirit not Absolute. 129 

their desire. To the attainment of these objects 
that desire is limited, and with this attainment it 
is satisfied. Moreover, when a bodily appetite is 
satisfied, it for the time ceases to exist, and may 
even be converted into nausea and disgust towards 
that which had been the object of pursuit. This 
is the necessary effect of a limitation which is 
absolute. But the case is very different with the 
appetites of the Mind, and still more with the 
cravings of the Spirit. Even in the purest 
physical investigations we are perpetually en- 
countering some mental barrier through which 
we cannot break, and over which we cannot see. 
And yet we know it and feel it to be a barrier 
and nothing more. We stop in front of it not 
because we are satisfied, but because it bars our 
way. Not only do we know that there is some- 
thing on the other side, but we know that the things 
on the other side are so closely related to the things 
on this side that without some vision of them we can- 
not really understand even the things we see. We 
feel our own ignorance, and our own helplessness, 
not because we have reached, but because we can- 
not, reach, the limits of our intellectual powers, and 
because the desires which correspond to them are 
consequently left unsatisfied. This is the difference 
between ourselves and the lower animals. We can 
perfectly understand the absolute limitations under 

which they lie, because in many of our lower 

1 



The Unity of Nature. 



faculties we share these limitations with the Beasts. 
All their powers and many of our own are exerted 
without any sense of limitation, and this because of 
the very fact that the limitation of them is absolute 
and complete. In their own nature they admit of 
no larger use. The held of effort and of attainable 
enjoyment is, as regards them, co-extensive with 
the whole field in view. Nothing is seen, or felt, or 
wished for by them which may not be possessed. 
In such possession all exertion ends, and all desire 
is satisfied. This is the law of every faculty sub- 
ject to a limit which is absolute ; and where this law 
does not apply, there we may be sure that the limita- 
tion is not absolute but conditional. 

Now this is the state of things in respect to all 
the higher faculties of the human Mind, when viewed 
in relation to the objects of their desire. These ob- 
jects are never attained fully, and as a necessary 
consequence that desire is never wholly satisfied. 
Not only do we know vaguely that there are things 
of which we are ignorant, but very often we know 
precisely what it is that we ask, and ask in vain. 
Moreover, the questions which excite our interest 
most, and which we feel to be most insoluble, are 
•precisely those which most nearly concern ourselves. 
Not to speak of the connection of the Body and the 
Mind, not to speak of the nature of Life, or still more 
of the nature of Death, — the simplest questions con- 
nected with our own Organisation are unanswered 



Limitation less Incapacity than Restraint. 131 

and unanswerable. Science gives us no help, be- 
cause the explanations which to it are ultimate are 
not ultimate at all to the faculties which seek for 
more light concerning them. The very language of 
science is, in this respect, often more deceptive than 
helpful, inasmuch as it is the fashion of scientific men 
to pass off as explanations, the mere re-statement of 
facts concealed under words derived from the dead 
languages. Perhaps it is all that they can do : but 
at least the poverty of the device should be seen and 
known. The " atoms " and the "molecules" — the 
"cells" and the "differentiated structures" — are these 
the builders, — or are they only the bricks and stones ? 
And the Forces and the Energies which work in these 
and upon these, what are they ? And if these are un- 
dying and inexhaustible, how are all the forms in 
which they are embodied so fugitive and evane- 
scent ? Our desire of knowing- these things is more 
intense in proportion to the overwhelming interest 
which our faculties do feel and recog-nise as belong-- 
ing to them. In the contrast between the eagerness 
of these appetites of the Mind, and the conscious 
weakness of the powers by which they can be satis- 
fied, we see a condition of things on which the Unity 
of Nature throws an important light. In physics, the 
existence of any pressure is the index of a " potential 
energy" which, though it may be doing no work, is yet 
always capable of doing it. And so in the intellectual 
world, the sense of pressure and confinement is the in- 



The Unity of Nature 



dex of powers which under other conditions are cap- 
able of doing what they cannot do at present. It is 
in these conditions that the barrier consists, and at 
least to a large extent they are external. What we 
feel, in short, is less an incapacity than a restraint. 

So much undoubtedly is to be said as to the 
nature of those limitations on our mental powers 
of which we are conscious. And the considera- 
tions thus presented to us are of immense import- 
ance in qualifying the conclusions to be drawn from 
the facts of consciousness. They do not justify, 
although they may account for, any feeling of 
despair as to the ultimate accessibility of that 
knowledge which we so much desire. On the con- 
trary, they suggest the idea that there is within us 
a Reserve of Power to some unknown and indefinite 
extent. It is as if we could understand indefinitely 
more than we can discover, if only some higher 
Intelligence would explain it to us. 

But if it is of importance to take note of this 
Reserve of Power of which we are conscious in our- 
selves, it is at least of equal importance to estimate 
aright the conceptions to which we can and do 
attain without drawing upon this Reserve at all. 
Not only are the bars confining us bars which we 
can conceive removed, but they are bars which in 
certain directions offer no impediment at all to a 
boundless range of vision. Perhaps there is no 
subject on which the fallacies of philosophic phrase- 



Space and Time Conceived as Infinite. 133 

ology have led to greater errors. " That the Finite 
cannot comprehend the Infinite," is a proposition 
constantly propounded as an undoubted and all- 
comprehensive truth. Such truth as does belong to 
it seems to come from the domain of Physics, in 
which it represents the axiom that a part cannot be 
equal to the whole. From this, in the domain of 
Mind, it comes to represent the truth, equally unde- 
niable, that we cannot know all that Infinity con- 
tains. But the meaning into which it is liable to 
pass when applied to Mind is that Man cannot 
conceive Infinity. And never was any proposition 
so commonly accepted which, in this sense, is so 
absolutely devoid of all foundation. Not only is 
Infinity conceivable by us, but it is inseparable from 
conceptions which are of all others the most familiar. 
Both the great conceptions of Space and Time are, 
in their very nature, infinite. We cannot conceive 
of either of these as subject to limitation. We 
cannot conceive of a moment after which there 
shall be no more Time, nor of a boundary beyond 
which there is no more Space. This means that 
we cannot but think of Space as infinite, and of 
Time as everlasting. 

If these two conceptions stood alone they would 
te enough ; for in regard to them the only incapacity 
under which we labour is the incapacity to conceive 
the Finite. All the divisions of Space and Time 
with which we are so familiar, — our davs and 



134 



The Unity of Nature, 



months and years, and our various units of distance, 
— we can only think of as bits and fragments of a 
whole which is illimitable. And although these great 
conceptions of Space and Time are possibly the 
only conceptions to which the idea of infinity attaches 
as an absolute necessity of Thought, they are by no 
means the only conceptions to which the same idea 
can be attached, and probably ought to be so. The 
conception of Matter is one, and the conception of 
Force # is another, to which we do not perhaps 
attach, as of necessity, the idea of indestructibility, 
or the idea of eternal existence and of infinite 
extension. But it is remarkable that in exact 
proportion as science advances, we are coming to 
understand that both of these are conceptions to 
which the idea of infinity not only may be, but 
ought to be attached. That is to say, that the 
eternal existence of Matter and the eternal dura- 
tion of Force are not only conceivable but true. 
Nay, it may be our ignorance alone that makes 
us think we can conceive the contrary. It is 
possible to conceive of Space being utterly devoid 
of Matter, only perhaps because we are accus- 
tomed to see and to think of spaces which are 

* I use the word " Force " as the cause or source of " Energy." Professor 
Tait now maintains that Force has no real or objective existence. But the 
arguments for this proposition would be equally valid against the "reality" of 
Sound and of Light, and of other things for which we must have a name. In all 
these cases the name or the word-denotes, not a " thing," but a group of relations 
among "things." This however is equally true of " Energy." See a Paper 
"On the "Reality of Force," by W. R. Browne, C.E.,/%/7. Mag., Nov. 1883, 



Force and Matter Cognisable as Infinite. 135 



indeed empty of visible substances. We can expel 
also the invisible substances or gases of the atmo- 
sphere, and we can speak and think of the result as 
a ''vacuum." But we know now that when air and 
all other terrestrial gases are gone the luminiferous 
medium remains ; and so far as we have means of 
knowing, this medium is ubiquitous and omnipresent 
in the whole Universe of Space. In like manner 
we are accustomed to see solid matter so dissipated 
as to be invisible, intangible, and wholly imper- 
ceptible ; and therefore we think we can imagine 
Matter to be really destructible. But the more we 
know of it, the more certain we become that it can- 
not be destroyed, and can only be redistributed. In 
like manner, in regard to Force, we are accustomed 
to see Matter in what is called statical equilibrium 
— that is to say, at rest ; and so perhaps we think 
we can conceive the cessation or extinction of 
Force. But here again the progress of research is 
tending more and more to attach irrevocably the 
idea of indestructibility — that is, of eternal existence 
— to that which we know as Force. 

The truth is, that this conception is really impli- 
citly involved in the conception of the indestructi- 
bility of Matter. For all that we know of Matter 
is inseparably connected with the Forces which it 
exerts, or which it is capable of exerting, or which 
are being exerted in it. The force of gravitation 
seems to be all-pervading, and to be either an. 



136 



The Unity of Nature. 



inherent power or property in every kind, or almost 
every kind of Matter,* or else to be the result of 
some kind of energy which is universal and un- 
quenchable. All bodies, however passive and 
inert they may seem to be under certain con- 
ditions, yet indicate by their very existence the 
power of those molecular forces to which the 
cohesion of their atoms is due. The fact is now 
familiar to us that the most perfect stillness and 
apparent rest in many forms of Matter, is but the 
result of a balance or equilibrium maintained 
between forces of the most tremendous energy, 
which are ready to burst forth at a moment's 
notice, when the conditions are changed under 
which that balance is maintained. And this 
principle, which has become familiar in the case 
of what are called explosive substances, because 
of the ease and the certainty with which the 
balanced forces can be liberated, is a principle 
which really prevails in the composition of all 
material substances whatever ; the only difference 
being that the energies by which their molecules 
are held together are so held under conditions 
which are more stable — conditions which it is 
much more difficult to change — and conditions, 
therefore, which conceal from us the universal 
prevalence and power of Force in the constitu- 

* So far as known the luminiferous medium is not ponderable. But, on the 
•other hand, it is, not improbably, concerned in gravitation as a cause. 



Conservation and Dissipation of Energy. 137 

tion of the material Universe. It is, therefore, 
distinctly the tendency of science more and more 
to impress us with the idea of the unlimited dura- 
tion and indestructible nature both of Matter and of 
the energies which work in it and upon it. 

One of the scientific forms under which this idea 
is expressed is the Conservation of Energy. It 
affirms that though we often see moving bodies 
stopped in their course, and the energy with which 
they move apparently extinguished, no such ex- 
tinction is really effected. It affirms that this 
energy is merely transformed into other kinds of 
motion, which may or may not be visible, but 
which, whether visible or not, do always really 
survive the motion which has been arrested. It 
affirms, in short, that Energy, like Matter, of which 
indeed it is but an incident and an attribute, cannot 
be destroyed or lessened in quantity, but can only 
be redistributed. 

As, however, the whole existing Order of Nature 
depends on very special distributions and concen- 
trations of Force, this doctrine affords no ground 
for presuming on the permanence, or even on the 
prolonged continuance, of that Order. Quite the 
contrary ; for another general conception has been 
attained from science which at first sight appears 
to be a contradiction of the doctrine of " Conser- 
vation of Energy" — namely, the " Dissipation of 
Energy." This doctrine, however, does not affirm 



138 The Unity of Nature. 



that Energy can be dissipated in the sense of being 
wholly lost or finally extinguished. It only affirms 
that all the existing concentrations and arrange- 
ments of Force are marked as temporary — that they 
are being gradually exhausted, and that the forces 
concerned in them are being diffused (generally 
in the form of Heat) more and more equally over 
the infinitudes of Matter and of Space. 

Closely connected with, if indeed it be not a ne- 
cessary part and consequence of, these conceptions 
of the infinity of Space and Time, of Matter and 
of Force, is the more general concept of Causation. 

It is impossible to conceive of anything happen- 
ing without a cause. Even if we could conceive 
the utter destruction or annihilation of any parti- 
cular force, or form of Force, we cannot conceive 
of this very destruction happening except as the 
effect of some cause. All attempts to reduce this 
idea of Causation to other and lower terms have 
been worse than futile. They have uniformly left 
out something which is of the very essence of 
the idea. The notion of " uniform antecedence " 
is not equivalent. " Necessary antecedence " is 
more near the mark. These words do indeed 
indicate the essential element in the idea with 
tolerable clearness. But like all other simple 
fundamental conceptions, the idea of Causation 
defies analysis. As, however, we cannot dissociate 
the idea of Causation from the idea of Force or of 



Causation and Correlation of Forces. 139 



Energy, it may perhaps be said that the inde- 
structibility or eternal duration of Force is a physical 
doctrine which gives strength and substance to the 
metaphysical concept of Causation. Science may 
discover, and indeed has already discovered, that 
as regards our application of the idea of cause, and 
of the correlative idea of effect, to particular cases 
of sequence, there is often some apparent confusion 
arising from the fact that the relative positions of 
cause and effect may be interchangeable, so that A, 
which at one moment appears as the cause of B, 
becomes at another moment the consequence of B, 
and not its cause. Thus Heat is very often the 
cause of visible Motion, and visible Motion is again 
the cause of Heat. And so of the whole cycle of 
Physical Forces, which Sir W. Grove and others 
have proved to be " correlated " — that is, to be so 
intimately related that each may in turn produce or 
pass into all the others. But this does not really 
obscure or cast any doubt upon the truth of our 
idea of Causation. On the contrary, that idea is 
confirmed in receiving a new interpretation, and in 
the disclosure of physical facts involving the same 
conception. The necessity of the connection be- 
tween an effect and its cause receives an unexpected 
confirmation when it comes to be regarded as 
simply the necessary passing of an energy which is 
universal and indestructible from one form of action 



140 



The Unity of Nature. 



into another. Heat becomes the cause of Li^ht 
because it is the same energy working in a special 
medium. Conversely Light becomes the cause of 
Heat, because again the same energy passes into 
another medium and there produces a different 
effect. And so all the so-called " Correlated Forces'* 
may be interchangeably the cause or the conse- 
quence of each other, according to the order of time 
in which the changes of form are seen. This, how- 
ever, does not confound, but only illustrates the 
ineradicable conviction that for all such changes 
there must be a cause. It may be perfectly true 
that all these Correlated Forces can be ideally re- 
duced to different " forms of motion;" but Motion 
itself is inconceivable except as existing in Matter, 
and as the result of some moving force. Every 
difference of direction in the motion or in the form 
of Matter implies a change, and we can conceive no 
change without a cause — that is to say, apart from 
the operation of some condition without which that 
change would not have been. 

The same ultimate conceptions, and no other, 
appear to constitute all the truth that is to be found 
in a favourite doctrine among the cultivators of 
physical science — the so-called "Law of Continuity." 
This phrase is indeed often used with such loose- 
ness of meaning that it is extremely difficult to 
understand the primary signification attached to it. 



The So-called Law of Continuity* 141 



One common definition, or rather one common 
illustration, of this law is said to be that Xature 
does nothing suddenly — nothing ''per saltum." 
Of course this can only be accepted under some 
metaphorical or transcendental meaning. In Na- 
ture there is such a thinor as a flash of lioditnino- 
and this is generally recognised as sufficiently 
sudden. A o-reat many other exertions of electric 
force are of similar rapidity. The action of 
Chemical Affinity is always rapid, and very often 
even instantaneous. Yet these are amono- the 
most common and the most powerful factors in the 
mechanism of Nature. They have the most in- 
timate connection with the phenomena of Life, and 
we know only too well that in these the profoundest 
changes are often determined in moments of time. 
For many purposes to which this so-called ;; Law 
of Continuity 55 is often applied in argument no idler 
do^ma was ever invented in the schools. There is 
a common superstition that this so-called law shuts 
out the idea of Creation, and negatives the possibility, 
for example, of the sudden appearance of new Forms 
of Life. What it does negative, however, is not any 
appearance which is sudden, but only any appearance 
which has been unprepared. But these are two 
very different conceptions, although they are con- 
ceptions very easily confounded. Innumerable 
things mav come to be. in a moment — in the twink- 



142 



The Unity of Nature. 



ling of an eye. But nothing can come to be 
without a long, even if it be a secret, history. The 
" Law of Continuity " is, therefore, a phrase of 
ambiguous meaning ; but at the bottom of it there 
lies the true and invincible conviction that for every 
change, however sudden — for every " leap," how- 
ever wide — there has always been a long chain of 
predetermining causes, and that even the most 
tremendous bursts of Energy and the most sudden 
exhibitions of Force have all been slowly and silently 
prepared. In this sense the Law of Continuity is 
nothing but the idea of Causation. It is founded on 
the necessary duration which we cannot but attribute 
to the existence of Force, and this appears to be the 
only truth which the Law of Continuity represents. 

When now we consider the place in the whole 
system of our knowledge which is occupied by 
these great fundamental conceptions of Time and 
Space, and of Matter and of Force, and when we 
consider that we cannot even think of any one of 
these realities as capable of coming to an end, we 
may well be assured that, whatever may be the 
limits of the human Mind, they certainly do not 
prevent us from apprehending Infinity. On the 
contrary, it would rather appear that this appre- 
hension is the invariable and necessary result of 
every investigation of Nature. 

^ It is indeed of the highest importance to observe 
that some of these conceptions, especially the in- 



The Infinite a Conception of Science. 143 



destructibility of Matter and of Force, belong to 
the domain of science. That is to say, the syste- 
matic examination of natural phenomena has given 
them a distinctness and a consistency which they 
never possessed before. As now accepted and 
defined, they are the result of direct experiment. 
And yet, strictly speaking, all that experiment can 
do is to prove that in all the cases in which either 
Matter or Force seems to be destroyed, no such 
destruction has taken place. Here then we have a 
very limited and imperfect amount of " experience " 
giving rise to an infinite conception. But it is 
another of the suggestions of the Agnostic philo- 
sophy that this can never be a legitimate result. 
Nevertheless, it is a fact, that these conceptions 
have been reached. They are now universally 
accepted and taught as truths lying at the founda- 
tion of every branch of natural science — at once 
the beginning and the end of every physical inves- 
tigation. They are not what are ordinarily called 
"laws." They stand on much higher ground. 
They stand behind and before every law, whether 
that word be taken to mean simply an observed 
order of facts, or some particular force to which 
that order is due, or some combinations of force 
for the discharge of function, or some abstract 
definition of observed phenomena such as the 
4t laws of motion." * All these, though they may be 

* For the fuller definition of the senses in which " Law " is used, see 
« Reign of Law," Chap. I. 



144 



* The Unity of Nature. 



" invariable " so far as we can see, carry with them 
no character of universal or necessary truth— no 
conviction that they are and must be true in all 
places and for all time. There is no existing order 
— no present combination of Matter or of Force 
■ — which we cannot conceive coming to an end. 
But when that end is come, we cannot conceive but 
that something must remain, — if it be nothing else 
than that by which the ending was brought about, 
or, as it were, the raw materials of the creation 
which has passed away. 

That this conception, when once suggested 
and clearly apprehended, cannot be eradicated, 
is one of the most indisputable facts of instructed 
consciousness. That no possible amount of mere 
external observation or experiment can cover the 
infinitude of the conclusion is also unquestionably 
true. But if " experience " is to be upheld as in 
any sense the ground and basis of all our know- 
ledge, it must be understood as embracing that 
most important of all kinds of experience in the 
study of Nature — the experience we have of the 
laws of Mind. It is* one of the most certain 
of those laws, that in proportion as the powers 
of the understanding are well developed, and are 
prepared by previous training for the interpretation 
of natural facts, there is no relation whatever 
between the time occupied in the observation 



The Infinite often Discernible at a Glance. 145 



of phenomena and the breadth or sweep of the 
conclusions which may be arrived at from them. 
A single glance, lasting not above a moment, may 
awaken the recognition of truths as wide as the 
Universe and as everlasting as Time itself. Nay, 
it has often happened in the history of science 
that such recognitions of general truths have been 
reached by no other kind of observation than that 
of the Mind becoming conscious of its own innate 
perceptions. Conceptions of this nature have per- 
petually gone before experiment — have suggested 
it, guided it, — and have received nothing more than 
corroboration from it. I do not say that these con- 
ceptions have been reached without any process. 
But the process has been to a large extent as un- 
conscious as that by which we see the light. I do 
not say they have been reached without " experi- 
ence," even in that narrow sense in which it means 
the observation of external things. But the expe- 
rience has been nothing more than the act of living- 
in the world, and of breathing in it, and of looking 
round upon it. These conceptions have come to 
Man because he is a Being in harmony with sur- 
rounding Nature. The human Mind has opened 
to them as a bud opens to the sun and air. 

So true is this, that when reasons have been given 
for the conclusions thus arrived at — these reasons 
have often been quite erroneous. Nothing in the 



1 46 



The Unity of Nature. 



history of Philosophy is more curious than the close 
correspondence between many ideas enunciated by 
the ancients as the result of speculation, and some, 
at least, of the ideas now prevalent as the result 
of science. It is true that the ancients expressed 
them vaguely, associated them with other concep- 
tions which are wide of the truth, and quoted in 
support of them illustrations which are often 
childish. Nevertheless, the fact remains that they 
had attained to some central truths, however 
obscured the perception may have been by igno- 
rance of the more precise and accurate analogies 
"by which they can be best explained, and which 
only the process of observation has revealed. 
" They had in some way grasped," says Mr. 
Balfour Stewart,* "the idea of the essential un- 
rest and energy of things. They had also the 
idea of small particles or atoms ; and finally of a 
medium of some sort, so that they were not wholly 
ignorant of the most profound and deeply seated 
of the principles of the material universe." There 
is but one explanation of this, but it is all-sufficient. 
It is that theMind of Man is a part, and one at 
least of the highest parts, of the System of the Uni- 
verse — the result of mechanism specially adapted 
to the purpose of catching and translating into 

* * Conservation of Energy," p. 135. 



Our Intuitions Indexes of Higher Truths. 147 



thought the light of truth as embodied in surround- 
ing Nature. 

We have seen that the foundations of all con- 
scious reasoning are to be found in certain propo- 
sitions which we call self-evident, — that is to say, 
in propositions the truth of which is intuitively 
perceived. We have seen, too, as a general law 
affecting all manifestations of Life or Mind, even in 
its very lowest forms, that instinctive or intuitional 
perceptions are the expression and the index of 
other and larger truths which lie entirely beyond 
the range of the perception or of the intuition which 
is immediately concerned. This law holds good 
quite as much of the higher intuitions which are 
peculiar to Man as of the mere intuitions of sen- 
sation which are common to him and to the animals 
beneath him. The lowest Savage does many things 
by mere instinct which contain implicitly truths of a 
very abstract nature — truths of which, as such, he 
has not the remotest conception, and which in the 
present undeveloped condition of his faculties it 
would be impossible to explain to him. Thus, 
when he goes into the forest to cut a branch fit 
for being made into a bow, or when he goes to 
the marsh to cut a reed fit for being made into 
an arrow, and when in doing so he cuts them of 
the proper length by measuring them with the 
bows and arrows which he already has, in this 



148 



The Unity of Nature. 



simple operation he is acting on the abstract and 
most fruitful truth that " things equal to the same 
thing are equal to one another." This is one of the 
axioms which lie at the basis of all mathematical 
demonstration. But as a general, universal, and 
necessary truth the Savage knows nothing of it — as 
little as he knows of the wonderful consequences 
to which it will some day lead his children or de- 
scendants. So in like manner when the Savage 
designs, as he often does, most ingenious traps 
for the capture of his prey, and so baits them as 
to attract the animals he desires to catch, he is 
counting first on the constancy and uniformity of 
Physical Causation, and, secondly, on the profoundly 
different action of the motives which determine the 
conduct of creatures having Life and Will. But of 
neither of these as general truths does he know 
anything ; and of one of them, at least, not even the 
greatest philosophers have reached the full depth 
or meaning. Nevertheless, it would be a great 
error to suppose that the Savage, because he has no 
conception of the general truth involved in his con- 
duct, has been guided in that conduct by anything 
in the nature of chance or accident. His intuitions 
have been right, and have involved so much per- 
ception of truth as is necessary to carry him along 
the little way he requires to travel, because the 
Mind in which those intuitions lie is a product and 



The Immortal Service of Kant 



149 



a part of Nature — a product and part of that great 
System of things which is held together by laws 
intelligible to Mind — laws which the human mind 
has been constructed to feel even when it cannot 
clearly see. Moreover, when these laws come to 
be clearly seen, they are seen only because the 
Mind has Organs adjusted to the perception of them, 
and because it finds in its own mechanism corre- 
sponding sequences of thought. 

It was the work of a great German metaphy- 
sician towards the close of the last century to dis- 
criminate and define more systematically than had 
been done before some at least of those higher 
elements of thought which, over and above the 
mere perception of external things, the Mind thus 
contributes out of its own structure to the fabric 
of knowledge. In doing this he did immortal 
service — proving that when men talked of " experi- 
ence" being the only source of knowledge, they 
forgot that the whole process of experience presup- 
poses the action of innate laws of thought, without 
which experience can neither gather its facts nor 
reach their interpretation. " Experience," as Kant 
most truly said, is nothing but a " synthesis of Intui- 
tions " — a building up or putting together of con- 
ceptions which the access of external Nature finds 
ready to be awakened in the Mind. The whole of 
this building process is determined by the Mind's 



The Unity of Nature. 



own laws — a process in which even observation of 
outward fact must take its place according to those 
principles of arrangement in which alone all ex- 
planation of them consists, and out of which any 
understanding of them is impossible. 

And yet this great fact of a large part of our 
knowledge — and that the most important part — 
coming to us out of the very furniture and con- 
stitution of the Mind itself, has been so expressed 
and presented in the language of philosophy as 
rather to undermine than to establish our confidence 
in the certainty of knowledge. For if the Mind is 
so spoken of and represented as to suggest the 
idea of something apart from the general System of 
Nature, and if its laws of thought are looked upon 
as " forms " or moulds into which, by some arti- 
ficial arrangement or by some mechanical necessity, 
everything from outside must be squeezed and made 
to fit — then it will naturally occur to us to doubt 
whether conceptions cut out and manufactured 
under such conditions can be any trustworthy re- 
presentation of the truth. Such, unfortunately, has 
been the mode of representation adopted by many 
philosophers — and such accordingly has been the 
result of their teaching. This is the great source 
of error in every form of the Idealistic philosophy, 
but it is a source of error which can be perfectly 
eliminated, leaving untouched and undoubted the 



Laws of Thought Laws of Nature. 151 

large body of truths which has made that philo- 
sophy attractive to so many powerful minds. We 
have only to take care that in expressing those 
truths we do not use metaphors which are mis- 
leading. We have only to remember that we 
mifst regard the Mind and the laws of its opera- 
tion in the light of that most assured truth — the 
Unity of Nature. Then, indeed, we shall come 
to see that the Mind has no " moulds " which 
have not themselves been moulded on the realities 
of the Universe — no " forms" which it did not 
receive as a part and a consequence of its Unity 
with the rest of Nature. Its conceptions are not 
manufactured ; they are developed. They are not 
made ; they simply grow. The order of thought 
under which the human Mind renders intelligible to 
itself all the phenomena of the Universe, is not an 
order which it invents, but an order which it sim- 
ply feels and sees. And this "vision and faculty 
divine " is a necessary consequence of its congenital 
relations with the whole System of Nature — from 
being bone of its bone, flesh of its flesh — from 
breathing its atmosphere, from living in its light, 
and from having with it a thousand points of con- 
tact visible and invisible, more than we can number 
or understand. 

And yet so subtle are the suggestions of the 
human Spirit in disparagement of its own powers- — 



152 



The Unity of Nature. 



so near and ever present to us is that region which 
belongs to the unsatisfied Reserve of Power — that 
the very fact of our knowledge arising out of our 
Organic relations with the rest of Nature has been 
seized upon as only casting new discredit on all 
that we seem to know. Because all our knowledge 
arises out of these relations, therefore, it is said, all 
our knowledge of things must be itself " relative ; " 
and relative knowledge is not knowledge of " things 
in themselves." Such is the argument of metaphy- 
sicians — an argument repeated with singular unani- 
mity by philosophers of almost every school of 
thought. By some it has been made the basis of 
religious proof. By some it has been made the basis 
of a reasoned scepticism. By others it has been used 
simply to foil attacks upon belief. The real truth 
is that it is an argument useless for any purpose 
whatever, because it is not itself true. The distinc- 
tion between knowledge of things in their relations, 
and knowledge of things " in themselves/' is a dis- 
tinction without a meaning. In metaphysics the 
assertion that we can never attain to any know- 
ledge of things " in themselves " does not mean 
simply that we know things only in a few relations 
out of many. It does not mean even that there 
may be and probably are a great many relations 
which we have not faculties enabling- us to con- 
ceive. All this is quite true, and a most important 



" Things in Themselves" Nonsense. 153 



truth. But the metaphysical distinction is quite 
different. It affirms that if we knew things in 
every one of the relations that affect them, we 
should still be no nearer than before to a know- 
ledge of " things in themselves." " It is proper to 
observe," says Sir W. Hamilton, " that had we 
faculties equal in number to all the possible modes 
of existence, whether of Mind or Matter, still 
would our knowledge of Mind or Matter be only 
relative. If material existence could exhibit ten 
thousand phenomena — if we possessed ten thousand 
senses to apprehend these ten thousand phenomena 
of material existence, of existence absolutely and 
in itself, we should then be as ignorant as we are 
at present." * The conception here is that there 
is something to be known about things in which 
they are not presented as in any relation to 
anything else. It affirms that there are certain 
ultimate entities in Nature to which all phenomena 
are due, and yet which can be thought of as having 
no relation to these phenomena, or to ourselves or 
to any other existence whatever. 

Now, as the very idea of knowledge consists in 
the perception of relations, this affirmation is, in the 
purest sense of the word, nonsense — that is to say, it 
is a series of words which have either no meaning 
at all or a meaning which is self-contradictory. It 

* " Lectures," vol. i. p. 145. 



154 



The Unity of Nature. 



belongs to the class of propositions which throw 
just discredit on metaphysics — mere verbal pro- 
positions, pretending to deal with conceptions which 
are no conceptions at all, but empty sounds. The 
" unconditioned," we are told, " is unthinkable : 
but words which are unthinkable had better be 
also unspeakable, or at least unspoken. It is 
altogether untrue that we are compelled to believe 
in the existence of anything which is " uncon- 
ditioned " — in Matter with no qualities — in Minds 
with no character — in a God with no attributes. 
Even the metaphysicians who dwell on this dis- 
tinction between the Relative and the Uncon- 
ditioned admit that it is one to which no idea can 
be attached. Yet, in spite of this admission, they 
proceed to found many inferences upon it, as if it 
had an intelligible meaning. Those who have not 
been accustomed to metaphysical literature could 
hardly believe the flagrant unreason which is 
common on this subject. It cannot be better 
illustrated than by quoting the words in which this 
favourite doctrine is expressed by Sir William 
Hamilton. Speaking of our knowledge of Matter 
he says : " It is a name for something known — 
for that which appears to us under the forms of 
extension, solidity, divisibility, figure, motion, rough- 
ness, smoothness, colour, heat, cold," &c. "But," 
he goes on to say, "as these phenomena appear 



Sir W. Hamilton on Knowledge of Matter. 1 5 5 

only in conjunction, we are compelled by the con- 
stitution of our nature to think them conjoined in 
and by something ; and as they are phenomena, we 
cannot think them the phenomena of nothing, but 
must regard them as the properties or qualities of 
something that is extended, figured, &c. But this 
something, absolutely and in itself— £0., considered 
apart from its phenomena — is to us as Zero. It 
is only in its qualities, only in its effects, in its 
relative or phenomenal existence, that it is cognis- 
able or conceivable ; and it is only by a Jaw of 
thought which compels us to think something 
absolute and unknown, as the basis or condition 
of the relative and known, that this something 
obtains a kind of incomprehensible reality to us." 
The argument here is that because phenomena are 
and must be the " properties or qualities of some- 
thing else," therefore we are " compelled to think " 
of that something as having an existence separable 
from any relation to its own qualities and properties, 
and that this something acquires from this reasoning 
a " kind of incomprehensible reality ! " The answer 
to all this is — there is no such law of thought. There 
is no such necessity of thinking nonsense as is here 
alleged. All that we are compelled to think is that 
the ultimate constitution of Matter, and the ultimate 
source of its relations to our own Organism, are 
unknown, and are probably inaccessible to us. But 



The Unity of Nature. 



this is a very different conception from that which 
affirms that if we did know or could know these 
ultimate truths we should find in them anything 
standing absolutely alone and unrelated to other 
existences in the Universe. 

It is, however, so important that we should 
define to ourselves as clearly as we can the nature 
of the limitations which affect our knowledge, and 
the real inferences which are to be derived from the 
consciousness we have of them, that it may be well 
to examine these dicta of metaphysicians in the 
light of specific instances. It becomes all the more 
important to do so when we observe that the lan- 
guage in which these dicta are expressed generally 
implies that knowledge which is " only relative " 
is less genuine or less absolutely true than some 
other kind of knowledge which is not explained, 
except that it must be knowledge of that which has 
no relation to the Mind. 

There is a sense (and it is the only sense in 
which the words have any meaning) in which w r e 
are all accustomed to say that we know a thing " in 
itself," when we have found out, for example, its origin, 
or its structure, or its chemical composition, as distin- 
guished from its more superficial aspects. If a new 
substance were offered to us as food, and if we 
examined its appearance to the eye, and felt its 
consistency to the touch, and smelt its odour, and 



What Knowing a Thing in Itself really is. 157 

finally tasted it, we should then know as much 
about it as these various senses could tell us. 
Other senses, or other forms of sensation, might 
soon add their own several contributions to our 
knowledge, and we might discover that this sub- 
stance had deleterious effects upon the human 
Organism. This would be knowing, perhaps, 
by far the most important things that are to be 
known about it. But we should certainly like to 
know more, and we should probably consider that 
we had found out what it was " in itself," when we 
had discovered farther, for example, that it was the 
fruit of a tree. Chemistry might next inform us of 
the analysis of the fruit, and might exhibit some 
alkaloid to which its peculiar properties and its 
peculiar effects upon the body are due. This, 
again, we should certainly consider as knowing- 
what it is " in itself." But other questions respect- 
ing it would remain behind. How the tree can 
extract this alkaloid from the inorganic elements 
of the soil, and how, when so extracted, it should 
have such and such peculiar effects upon the animal 
body ; these, and similar questions, we may ask, 
and probably we shall ask in vain. But there is 
nothing in the inaccessibility of this knowledge to 
suggest that we are absolutely incapable of under- 
standing the answer if it were explained to us, 
On the contrary, the disposition we have to put 



158 The Unity of Nature. 

such questions raises a strong presumption that the 
answer would be one capable of that assimilation 
by our intellectual nature in which all understand- 
ing of anything consists. There is nothing in the 
series of phenomena which this substance has 
exhibited to us — nothing in the questions which 
they raise which can even suggest the idea that 
all these relations which we have traced, or any 
others which may remain behind, are the result of 
something which can be thought of or conceived 
as neither a cause nor a consequence — but solitary 
and unrelated. On the contrary, all that remains 
unexplained is the nature and cause of its relations 
— its relations on the one hand to the elements 
out of which vegetable Vitality has combined it, 
and its relations on the other hand to the still 
higher Vitality which it threatens to destroy. Its 
place in the Unity of Nature is the ultimate object 
of our search, and this unity is essentially a unity 
of relations, and of nothing else. That Unity every- 
where proclaims the truth that there is nothing 
in the wide Universe which stands unrelated to 
the rest. 

Let us take another example. Until modern 
science had established its methods of physical 
investigation, Light and Sound were known as 
sensations only. That is to say, they were known 
in terms of the mental impressions which they 



Oicr Knowledge of Light and Sound, 159 



immediately produce upon us, and in no other 
terms whatever. There was no proof that in 
these sensations we had any knowledge " in them- 
selves " of the external agencies which produce 
them. But now all this is changed. Science 
has discovered what these two agencies are "in 
themselves ; " — that is to say, it has defined them 
under aspects which are totally distinct from see- 
ing or hearing, and is able to describe them in 
terms addressed to wholly different faculties of 
conception. Both Light and Sound are in the 
nature of undulatory movements in elastic media 
— to which undulations our Organs of sight and 
hearing are respectively adjusted or <c attuned." 
In these Organs, by virtue of that adjustment or 
attuning, these same undulations are " translated " 
into the sensations which we know. It thus ap- 
pears that the facts as described to us in this 
language of sensation are the true equivalent of 
the facts as described in the very different lan- 
guage of intellectual analysis. The eye is now 
understood to be an Apparatus for enabling the 
Mind instantaneously to appreciate differences of 
motion which are of almost inconceivable minute- 
ness. The pleasure we derive from the harmonies 
of colour and of sound, although mere sensations, 
do correctly represent the movement of undulations 
in a definite order; whilst those other sensations 



i6o The Unity of Nature, 



which we know as discords represent the actual 
clashing and disorder of interfering waves. 

Thus it is that in breathing the healthy air of 
physical discoveries such as these, although the 
limitations of our knowledge continually haunt us, 
we gain nevertheless a triumphant sense of its 
certainty and of its truth. Not only are the mental 
impressions which our Organs have been so con- 
structed as to convey, proved to be a true inter- 
pretation of external facts, but the conclusions we 
draw as to their origin and their source, and 
as to the guarantee we have for the accuracy of 
our conceptions, are placed on the firmest of all 
foundations. The mirror into which we look is a 
true mirror, reflecting accurately and with infinite 
fineness the realities of Nature. And this great 
lesson is being repeated in every new discovery, 
and in every new application of an old one. Every 
reduction of phenomena to ascertained measures of 
force; every application of mathematical proof to 
theoretical conceptions ; every detection of identical 
operations in diverse departments of Nature ; every 
subjection of material agencies to the service of 
Mankind ; every confirmation of knowledge acquired 
through one sense by the evidence of another ; — 
each and all of these operations add to the verifica- 
tions of science, confirm our reasonable trust in the* 
faculties we possess, and assure us that the know- 



Light and Sound as " Known in Themselves." 161 



ledge we acquire by the careful use of these is a 
real and substantial knowledge of the truth. 

If now we examine the kind of knowledge re- 
specting Light and Sound which recent discoveries 
have revealed to us, as compared with the know- 
ledge which we had of them before these dis- 
coveries were made, we shall find that there is an 
important difference. The knowledge which we 
had before was the simple and elementary know- 
ledge of Sensation. As compared with that know- 
ledge the new knowledge we have acquired re- 
specting Light and Sound is a knowledge of these 
things " in themselves." Such is the language in 
which we should naturally express our sense of 
that difference, and in so expressing it we should 
be expressing an important truth. The newer 
knowledge is a higher knowledge than the older 
and simpler knowledge which we had before. 
And why ? Wherein does this higher quality of 
the new knowledge consist ? Is it not in the very 
fact that the new knowledge is the perception of, 
a higher kind of relation than that which we had 
perceived before ? There is no difference between 
the two kinds of knowledge in respect to the mere 
abstract character of relativity. The old was as 
relative as the new ; and the new is as relative 
as the old. Before the new discoveries, Sound 
was known to come from sonorous bodies, and 



l62 



The Unity of Nature, 



Light was known to come from luminous bodies. 
This was a relation — but a relation of the vaguest 
and most general kind. As compared with this 
vague relation, the new relation under which we 
know them is knowledge of a more definite and of 
a higher kind. Light and Sound we now know to 
be words or ideas representing not merely any one 
thing or any two things, but especially a relation of 
Adjustment between a number of things. In this 
Adjustment Light and Sound, as known to Sense, 
do " in themselves " consist. Sound becomes known 
to us as the attunement between certain aerial pul- 
sations and the auditory apparatus. Light becomes 
known to us as a similar or analogous attunement 
between the ethereal pulsations and the optic 
apparatus. Sound in this sense is not the aerial 
waves " in themselves," but in their relation to 
the ear. Light is not the ethereal undulations " in 
themselves," but in their relation to the eye. It is 
only when these come into contact with a pre- 
arranged machinery that they become what we 
know and speak of as Light and Sound. This 
conception, therefore, is found to represent and 
express a pure relation ; and it is a conception 
higher than the one we had before, not because it 
is either less or more relative, but because its 
relativity is to a higher faculty of the intellect or 
the understanding. 



Order of Precedence in Knowledge. 163 



And, indeed, when we come to think of it, we 
^ee that all kinds of knowledge must take their 
place and rank according to this order of pre- 
cedence. For as all knowledge consists in the 
establishment of relations between external facts 
and the various Faculties of the Mind, the highest 
knowledge must always be that in which such 
relations are established with those intellectual 
powers which are of the highest kind. Hence 
we have a strictly scientific basis of classification 
for arranging the three great subjects of all 
human inquiry — the What, the How, and the 
Why. These are steps in an ascending series. 
What things are — How they come to be — and 
what Purpose they serve in the whole system of 
Nature — these are the questions, each rising 
above the other, which correspond to the order 
and the rank of our own faculties in the value 
and importance of their work. 

It is the result of this analysis to establish that, 
even if it were true that there could be anything in 
the Universe existing out of relation with other 
things around it, or if it were conceivable that there 
could be any knowledge of things as they so exist, 
it would be not higher knowledge, but infinitely 
lower knowledge than that which we actually possess. 
It could at the best be only knowledge of the 
" What," and that too in the lowest conceivable 



164 



The Unity of Nature. 



form — knowledge of the barest, driest, nakedest 
existence, without value or significance of any 
kind. And further, it results from the same 
analysis that the relativity of human knowledge, 
instead of casting any doubt upon its authenticity, 
is the very characteristic which guarantees its 
reality and its truth. It results farther that the 
depth and completeness of that knowledge de- 
pends on the degree in which it brings the facts 
of Nature into relation with the ' Faculties which 
are highest in the scale of Mind. 

Nor is this result surprising. It must be so 
if Man is part of the great System of things in 
which he lives. It must be so, especially if in 
being part of it, he is also the highest visible part 
of it — the product of its " laws " and (as regards his 
own little corner of the Universe) the consumma- 
tion of its history. 

Neither can there be any doubt as to what are the 
supreme Faculties of the human Mind. They are 
the Faculties which are concerned with Purpose — 
purpose in other minds, and purpose in our own. 
All others are the instruments and subordinates of 
these. The power of initiating changes in the 
Order of Nature, and of shaping them by the 
highest motives to the noblest ends — this, in 
general terms, may be said to include or to in- 
volve them all. They are based upon the ultimate 



Knowledge of the Related and of the Real. 165 



and irresolvable power of Will, with that measure 
of freedom which belongs to it ; upon the faculty 
of understanding the use of means to ends, and 
upon the Moral Sense which recognises the law 
of Righteousness, and the ultimate Authority on 
which it rests. If the Universe or any part of it 
is ever to be really understood by us — if anything 
in the nature of an explanation is ever to be reached 
concerning the System of things in which we live, 
these are the perceptive powers to which the infor- 
mation must be given — these are the faculties to 
which the explanation must be addressed. When 
we desire to know the nature of things "in them- 
selves," we desire to know the highest of their re- 
lations which are conceivable to us: we desire, in 
the words of Bishop Butler, to know " the Author, 
the cause, and the end of them." * 

* Sermon " On the Ignorance of Man.* 



CHAPTER V. 
On the Truthfulness of Human Knowledge. 

JgUT another nightmare meets us here — another 
suggestion of hopeless doubt respecting the 
very possibility of knowledge touching questions 
such as these. Nay, it is the suggestion of a doubt 
even more discouraging — for it is a suggestion 
that these questions may probably be in them- 
selves absurd — assuming the existence of relations 
among things which do not exist at all — relations 
indeed of which we have some experience in our- 
selves, but which have no counterpart in the System 
of Nature. The suggestion, in short, is not merely 
that the answer to these questions is inaccessible, 
but that there is no answer at all. The objection 
is a fundamental one, and is summed up in the 
epithet applied to all such inquiries — that they 
are " Anthropomorphic." They assume Authorship 
in a personal sense, which is a purely human. 



Charge of Anthropomorphism Raised. 167 



idea — they assume causation, which is another 
human idea — and they assume the use of means 
for the attainment of ends, which also is purely 
human. It is considered by some persons as a 
thing in itself absurd that we should thus shape 
our conceptions of the ruling Power in Nature, 
or of a Divine Being, upon the conscious know- 
ledge we have of our own nature and attributes. 
Anthropomorphism is the phrase employed to con- 
demn this method of conception — an opprobrious 
epithet, as it were, which is attached to every 
endeavour to bring the higher attributes of the 
human Mind into any recognisable relation with the 
supreme agencies in Nature. 

And here it is not unimportant to observe that 
the word is in itself a misrepresentation of the fun- 
damental idea which it is employed to designate, 
and against which it is intended to raise a prejudice. 
Anthropomorphism means literally Man-Formism, 
conveying the idea that it is, in some sense or 
other, the human " Form " that is ascribed to the 
agencies which are at worl^ in Nature.* But this 
suggestion is altogether at variance with the truth. 

* It has been pointed out to me by my distinguished friend and old 
tutor, Dr. Howson, the Dean of Chester, that the Greek word /iop^.. 
(" Form ") had a very wide range of meaning, and that (for example) in 
the New Testament it is applied to "the form of knowledge and of the 
truth " (Rom. ii. 20), and to the " form of godliness" (2 Tim. iii. 5), and, 



1 68 



The Unity of Nature. 



It is not the Form of Man that is in question. It 
is the Mind and Spirit of Man — his Reason, his 
Intelligence, and his Will. Nor is it even these 
under all the conditions, or under any of the limita- 
tions, with which they are associated in us. But 
the question is of a real and fundamental analogy, 
despite all differences of form or of limiting condi- 
tions, between the Mind which is in us and the 
Mind which is in Nature. The true etymological 
expression for this idea, if we are to have any 
word constructed on the same model out of Greek, 
would be, not Anthropomorphism, but Anthropo- 
psychism, which means not Man - Formism, but 
Man-Soulism. The use of the word in this con- 
struction would raise much more truly the real 
issue. I shall therefore adopt it as a substitute in 
the argument which follows. 

The central idea of those who object to An- 
thropopsychism seems to be that there is nothing 
human in Nature, whether as regards its materials, 
or as regards any agency which controls them, 
and that when we think we see any such agency 

to spiritual things in other passages. But although this is true, the 
word " Anthropomorphism " seems to have been introduced in con- 
nection with the Greek habit of representing the Divine Personages 
of their mythology in the physical form of Humanity ; and it now 
always conveys a certain flavour of disparagement from its associa- 
tion with this materialistic habit and conception. 



The Central Idea in the Charge. 169 



there, we are like some foolish Beast wondering at 
its own shadow. The proposition which is really 
involved when stated nakedly is this : that there 
is no Mind in Nature having any relation with, or 
similitude to, our own, and that all our fancied recog- 
nitions of intellectual operations like those of Man 
in the Order of the Universe are delusive imagina- 
tions. If this proposition could be maintained, much 
indeed would follow from it. All confidence would 
be lost, not in one department only, but in every 
department of human thought and of human know- 
ledge. That knowledge would come to us tainted 
at its very source. 

At first sight it might appear as if all reasoning 
on the truthfulness of human knowledge must be 
reasoning in a circle. And so it would be if Reason 
were set to the task of proving the trustworthiness 
of itself. But the trustworthiness of our knowledge 
does not depend alone on the trustworthiness of our 
Reason. Our knowledge has other elements in it 
than the work of Reason. The operations of the 
Logical Faculty may have our absolute confidence, 
and yet the results arrived at may be full of doubt 
The possibility of this doubt arises not from any 
distrust of Reason, but from a distrust of the data 
which are supplied to Reason, and on which it is 
compelled to perform its appropriate work. That 
work may be performed with perfect accuracy, and it 



170 



The Unity of Nature. 



may be even inconceivable that it should be other- 
wise, and yet the conclusions to which such reason- 
ing leads may be entirely false. This possibility 
arises from the possibility of Reason starting with 
assumptions which are erroneous. The machinery 
of a loom may be in perfect order, and all its 
movements may be in accurate adjustment ; but 
if the thread supplied to it is bad, the web will 
be as unsound as its material. And so it is with 
the tissue of our knowledge. It is indeed useless 
to argue that Reason may be trusted. The very 
argument assumes the trust. But it is by no means 
useless to argue on the nature and on the sources 
of the data with which our reasoning is supplied. 
Now this is the very region in which the doubt of 
Anthropopsychism prevails, and in which Reason is 
habitually used to prove that all the data of know- 
ledge are inaccessible. If this be an argument 
which is capable of defence, it must also be an 
argument which is open to reply. It is an argu- 
ment which assumes that Reason can do something 
in testing the stuff on which it works. And so 
indeed it can. There is no substance in the mate- 
rial world the strength and texture of which can 
be tried by methods so sure and so various as the 
methods by which we can test the conceptions and 
intimations given to us from our contact with ex- 
ternal Nature. The senses of the body, fine and 



False Assumption Underlying the Charge, 171 



various as they are, do not compare in number or 
in fineness with the multiform apparatus, and the 
corresponding multiform operations, by which the 
Mind can try and verify the impressions of its 
own Intelligence. It is wonderful from how many 
independent points of view we can stand, as it 
were, outside ourselves, and mark those infinite and 
subtle coincidences between Thought and Fact which 
establish the Unity existing between all our Faculties 
and the great System which it is their business to 
understand and to interpret. Let us ascend to some 
of these points of observation now, and let us look 
around us as we can. 

The argument which the word Anthropopsychism 
involves, if it be an argument, — or the suggestion of 
doubt, if it be nothing more, — is only another form 
of the doctrine or of the misgiving with which we 
have been dealing in the last chapter. It assumes 
that the relation between the human Mind and the 
System of Nature in which we live is fundamentally 
a relation of contrast and not of harmony — a relation 
of difference so deep and so complete, that the in- 
tellectual impressions which Nature gives to us 
are not presumably right, but, on the contrary, are 
presumably wrong. The analogies which we see, 
or think we see, between our own thoughts and 
the processes or the results of Nature are not real, 
but false analogies. There are no such things as 



172 



The Unity of Nature, 



aims in Nature, and no such things as the employ- 
ment of means for the attainment of them. The 
appearance of any such connection is an appearance 
only. It is a mere human aspe # ct, and therefore a 
deceptive aspect, of the relation which really exists 
in Nature between the things which we see as 
causes and the things which follow as effects. 
The deceptiveness of this aspect arises out of the 
very fact that it is human, because what is human 
is at least non-natural, even if it be not positively 
unnatural and necessarily false. Man is no part of 
Nature. His Mind does not reflect her laws. On 
the contrary, his Intellect is separated by such a gulf 
from those laws, that it tends of necessity to misin- 
terpret and misconceive them. The very forms 
In which our perceptions and our conceptions are 
moulded are forms which have no counterpart out- 
side the Organism through which we see and think. 

All this is the same general idea and the same 
line of argument with which we have been dealing 
throughout the whole of this Work, and which the 
facts we have examined have shown to be in every 
way at variance with the most certain truths. But 
every form in which this idea can be presented de- 
serves the most patient investigation, both because 
of the power of the error it involves, and especially 
because of the subtlety of the suggestions from 
which it springs. The subtlety of these suggestions 



A Distinction Recognised in Language. 173 



lies in the close intermixture of what is true with 
what is false. From the beginning of this Essay I 
have protested against all conceptions of the Unity 
of Nature which depend on confounding her distinc- 
tions, or on concealing them, or in any way failing 
to give them their fullest value. I have dwelt, also, 
both here and elsewhere, on the respect we ought to 
pay in this matter to the evidence afforded by the 
ordinary use of Language — that great mine and re- 
cord of intellectual impressions, in which men, very 
often unconsciously, keep alive the sense and the 
memory of distinctions which philosophers forget, 
or which sometimes they intentionally conceal. 
Now in the profound questions which are before us 
here, this unconscious evidence of Language has a 
good deal to say. It cannot be denied that in com- 
mon speech we do habitually recognise a distinction 
between Man and Nature. Upon that distinction, 
whatever it may be, there are some schools of thought 
which place the highest value. They say — and they 
say with truth — that we must keep up our percep- 
tion of real distinctions, if we desire to keep any 
secure foundation for our perception of true analo- 
gies. If we are to recognise anywhere with certainty 
the phenomena of Mind and Will, we must hold 
firmly to the distinctions which separate them from 
the phenomena of mere Physical Causation, and of 
Mechanical Necessity. 



174 



The Unity of Nature. 



Agreeing altogether in this great fundamental • 
principle of all knowledge, I admit the value of the 
instinctive perception which is reflected in common 
speech touching the differences between Man and 
Nature. But in order to estimate what that value 
really is, we must observe carefully the whole, and 
not a part only, of the evidence which common 
speech affords. We shall then find that in that 
speech there is an universal recognition of certain 
aspects of the relation between Man and Nature, 
in which the distinction between them dissolves 
and disappears. And these aspects are not rare 
or abstract, but familiar and continually present. 
We none of us, for example, ever think or speak 
of our own bodies as belonging to any other 
domain than the domain of Nature. Not only in 
their materials, but in the combination of them — 
in all the phenomena of birth, and growth — of 
disease, decay, and death — our bodies are part 
of Nature and are obedient to her most ordinary 
laws. The distinction, therefore, between Man 
and Nature is confessedly a distinction which must 
cut Man himself in two. It must separate his 
body from its functions — his hands from the work 
which they perform — his brain from the reasoning 
powers of which it is the Organ and the seat. 

Beyond all doubt there is a distinction here, and 
a profound one, too. But it is no other than the 
old familiar distinction between Mind and Matter ; 



Mental Phenomena not Limited to Man. 175 



and the line which divides Mind from Matter is cer- 
tainly not coincident with the line which divides Man 
from Nature. For just as the dividing line between 
Mind and Matter is a line which cuts Man himself 
into two parts, so also is it a line which cuts into two 
parts not Man only, but the whole Natural System 
of things in which he lives. For that System which 
we call Nature does not consist only in its body 
of raw materials and of elementary forces. It con- 
sists even more essentially in the arrangement and 
organisation of these for ends which are intelligible 
as such. The phenomena of Mind are not confined 
to Man. They are manifested, in the first place, 
visibly and directly, although in varying degrees, 
throughout the whole series of living animals. 
They are manifested, in the second place, as ob- 
viously, though less directly, in the innumerable 
adaptations of which these animals are the most 
conspicuous examples. The recognition of both 
these facts in common speech is instinctive, uni- 
versal, and conclusive. We speak, of course, habi- 
tually of the aims of the lower animals, and of their 
contrivances to attain them ; we speak not less habi- 
tually of the far more subtle and elaborate con- 
trivances by which in virtue of their Organisation 
they are themselves enabled first to have these aims, 
and then to reach them. When, therefore, all these 
interpretations of Nature, equally common and in- 
stinctive, are set aside on the plea that there is not 



i 7 6 



The Unity of Nature. 



merely a distinction, but an antagonism and a con- 
trast between the Mind of Man and the governing 
agencies in Nature, it becomes necessary, in the 
conduct of this argument, to examine wherein the 
distinction between Man and Nature really lies ; and 
in no way can this examination be conducted so well 
as by taking some typical illustrations of the circum- 
stances under which that distinction comes out most 
broadly, and in which it may have struck us forcibly. 
I will take some illustrations which require a few 
words of preface. 

Very often when we speak of Nature we are 
thinking of nothing but the Physical Forces, and 
of these, too, not in their combinations, but taken 
separately, and, as it were, by themselves. Now 
it is quite true that each one of the Physical Forces 
in Nature, taken by itself, works uniformly and (as 
it seems to us) of necessity. Under exactly the 
same circumstances and combinations, they all do 
exactly the same things. But, on the other hand, 
it is equally true that in Nature these circumstances 
and combinations are not uniform nor constant, nor 
are they of necessity. On the contrary they are 
conspicuously various and contingent. We can our- 
selves change them in a variety of ways which is 
almost infinite, and it is by doing so, and in no other 
way whatever, that we can ever do anything at all. 
The look and the aspect of things done in this way 
is familiar to us. We call them artificial, because 



Seeming Accidental Action of Physical Force, 1 77 



we recognise them to be the work of artifice ; and 
in this recognition we rest upon the distinction 
between these things and other things which seem 
to be the result of no artifice whatever, but of mere 
Physical Causation, without any arrangement of con- 
ditions, and without any correspondence between 
preparation and result. For very often the Physical 
Forces work, or appear to us to work, not under 
any special combination, but, as it were, alone and 
by themselves. That is to say, they exhibit their 
purely natural effects under no particular or evident 
guidance or co-ordination or control. 

Even when these unguided operations are seen 
ultimately to fit into some great use in the economy 
of Nature, both the result and the causes of it ap- 
pear to us to be purely accidental. For example, 
the distribution of clays, and sands, and gravels, over 
the surface of the Earth forms an obvious link in the 
chain of causes which have prepared soils, and fitted 
them for the support of vegetation, and for cultiva- 
tion by the hand of Man. But this distribution of 
various materials over the surface of the Earth has 
been mainly the blind work of water, acting, as it 
always must act, under the universal force of gravi- 
tation. All gravels are the fragments of former 
rocks. Some of these fragments have been broken 
off by frosts, washed down by rains, carried into the 
beds of streams, and deposited at great distances. 

M 



173 



The Unity of Nature. 



from their original source. Other fragments have 
been carried into the sea, and have been rolled on 
stormy beaches for unknown periods of time. Now 
every one of these fragments is a work of Nature ; 
many of them reveal a wonderful history, and are 
the best evidence we have of great changes in the 
physical history of the Globe. They differ in 
almost every locality, with the nature of the rocks 
around them, and sometimes with the nature of 
rocks which are hundreds of miles away. For this 
reason, the composition of gravels is a subject of 
great interest to geologists, and those who have 
been accustomed to consider the questions upon 
which they bear soon acquire a habit of observing 
them which is almost unconscious. 

So it was that many years ago, as I was walking 
in a garden in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, 
my eye wandered over the materials which had 
been freshly scattered on the path. Suddenly, and 
very unexpectedly, it lighted on a fragment unlike 
the rest, and unlike them in a way which instantly 
carried its own explanation on its face. All the 
other fragments were works of Nature. This one 
fragment was certainly a work of human Art. It was 
a very small, but a very perfect arrowhead, made of 
yellow flint. What was it that made its artificial 
origin so obvious at a glance ? The Physical Forces 
of Nature, it is true, had made it ; but they had 



Human Art Discernible at a Glance. 



179 



made it under special direction and control. The 
Physical Forces of Nature, working by themselves, 
under no special direction or control, could never 
have made that arrowhead. No mere splitting 
by frost, no mere chipping by accidental collision 
with other fragments, still less any wearing by 
rivers or by the sea, could possibly have moulded 
that perfect symmetry of form, with its sharpened 
point, with its two lateral barbs, and with the little 
shank between them. But all this reasoning was 
an after- thought. In coming to my conclusion, I 
was not conscious of any reasoning. The recog- 
nition was instantaneous. It was the recognition 
in that fragment, alone of all the fragments round 
it, of two things which of all others are the most 
familiar to us. The first of these was the adapta- 
tion of material and of form to a known end, and 
the second of these was that particular mechanical 
method by which the particular animal Man makes 
the adaptations he intends. 

But now let us separate these two elements 
in the contrast between the arrowhead and the 
other fragments of gravel which lay around it. 
It was not the mere adaptation of material or of 
form to a known end which stamped it at a glance 
as human. It was the particular method by which 
that adaptation was attained. The mere charac- 
ter of adaptation to a known end — however it 
may have come about — belongs quite as much to 



i So 



The Unity of Nature. 



many works of Nature as to the works of Man. 
In this particular case indeed the surrounding frag- 
ments had not this character, but in many other 
cases closely analogous they might well have had it. 
For it so happens that in certain gravels of the 
South of England there are fragments in abundance 
closely resembling arrowheads, and with the cha- 
racter of special adaptation quite as visibly stamped 
upon them. . These are the fossil teeth of Sharks 
which swarmed in the seas which deposited the 
gravels of "The Crag." These teeth are like the 
arrowmead in being perfectly symmetrical and 
beautifully sharp and pointed. The special end, too, 
to which they are adapted is equally the infliction 
of a wound in the flesh of animals. Both are 
Implements and nothing else. Moreover, the 
principal difference between the two forms of 
Implement can only be explained by the difference 
between two Intentions. The men who made 
and who used arrowheads intended the arrow to 
remain fixed and rankling in the wound it made. 
The barbs are specially adapted to the fulfilment 
of this intention. But Nature gives no barbs to 
the teeth of carnivorous animals, for the very good 
reason that their method of killing is by a rapid 
repetition of bites. Any difficulty or impediment in 
the way of the withdrawal of the teeth from the 
wound first inflicted would therefore be a hindrance 



A Work of NaUire and a Work of Art. 1 8 1 



and not a help. It would clearly, therefore, be an 
obstacle to the intention in this case that the teeth 
of carnivorous animals should be barbed. 

We see, then, that in this case of a close general 
resemblance between a work of Nature and a work 
of human Art, both are equally examples of special 
adaptation, and that the only difference between 
them by which we recognise the one to be a work 
of Nature and the other to be a work of Man, is 
that the one is made by the processes of manufac- 
ture, and the other is produced by the processes of 
growth. In the one case, the purposes of Intention 
are attained by processes which work outside of 
the material which is to be shaped. In the other 
case, the purposes of a closely similar Intention are 
reached by processes which work as it were inside 
of those materials. In the one case, the shaping 
takes place by hand ; in the other case, the shaping 
takes place by growth. 

Now it is perfectly true that in a great part of 
the domain of Nature the Physical Forces, not only 
individually, but in their combinations, always ap- 
pear to us to be worked from the inside ; whilst it is 
equally true that Man can only work and use them 
from a position which is comparatively external. 
But in this relative position to the Physical Forces 
there is, at least, no distinction whatever between 
Man and other living creatures. No other living 



182 



The Unity of Nature. 



creature, indeed, is capable of making an imple- 
ment like an arrowhead,, because no other is cap- 
able of forming a deliberate intention so full of 
knowledge and of foresight. But many of the 
lower animals do build up and put together natural 
materials for the attainment of special ends. The 
nests of birds and of many insects, and the combs 
of Bees, are among the most familiar examples. 
How, in ordinary speech, should we classify these ? 
In the common use of language, should we or 
should we not recognise the distinction between 
such artificial constructions and the growths of 
Nature ? 

Again, I should answer this question by a prac- 
tical illustration, similar to that which I have em- 
ployed in the case of the arrowhead. After the 
lapse of many years I found myself again scan- 
ning the gravel at my feet, in a very different 
scene from a garden in the neighbourhood of 
Edinburgh. It was on the wild banks of the 
beautiful river which divides the Province of 
Quebec from the Province of New Brunswick in 
North America. Among the most striking features 
of the New World are its noble rivers. The phy- 
sical geography of Europe cannot afford the same 
rush of waters as the immense " catch-basins " 
of the American Continent. Even the smaller 
streams of the Canadian Dominion partake of the 



A Work of Beaver Art. 



same character of sweep and of abundance. The 
Restigouche is one of these. It falls into the 
head of the Bay of Chaleur, after running in a 
deep glen through many miles of forest hills. 
These hills are generally very steep ; and the 
soil is comparatively poor, so that there are few 
agricultural settlers, and their farms are often 
widely separated. During a fishing excursion on 
that river in the month of July 1879, I landed 
from a canoe not far from the junction of a large 
tributary, the Patapediac. All Canadian rivers 
bear more or less driftwood down their course, 
and on some of them, at points which favour the 
accumulation of it, there are sometimes thousands 
of tons heaped upon each other in impressive 
and picturesque confusion. At the point at which 
I landed there was nothing of the sort. On the 
contrary, the shore was remarkably clean, the 
natural gravel being smoothed and compacted by 
the annual passage of the ice in spring. But I 
soon came upon one little bit of driftwood lying 
among the stones, and something peculiar in its 
appearance at once attracted my attention. It 
was, like others of its kind, well worn, and both 
ends were well rounded. On lifting it, I saw in 
a moment that it had not been broken by wind 
from its parent tree. There were no straggling 
points, — no torn fibres, — no look of mere accident. 



The Unity of N attire. 



about it. At both ends it had been definitely 
cut, although the cut surfaces had been subsequently 
more or less smoothed by rubbing against the 
stones. On the other hand, nothing in its appear- 
ance suggested the work of a woodman's axe. On 
a closer examination the mystery was solved at 
once. Two deep incisions, as if made by two 
powerful chisels working together and parallel to 
each other, revealed the fact that this bit of 
wood had been cut and prepared by that curious 
animal to which, more than to any other, has been 
given an instinct and a habit of constructive pur- 
pose which resembles those of «Man. It flashed 
upon me in a moment that I was holding in my 
hand one of the bricks, as it were, used in the 
building of a Beaver's dam, or possibly one of 
the loaves which are stored for winter's food. 

Was this or was it not a work of Nature ? 
Certainly not — in at least one ordinary meaning 
of the word. It was because of the distinction 
between it and the mere work of the winds 
and of the waters and of the stones that I 
noticed it as peculiar. It was because of this dis- 
tinction that I then thought of it, and now write 
of it, as a thing of higher interest than a mere bit 
of the tangled driftwood of the Restigouche. But 
if any one should hesitate upon this point, namely, 
as to whether things fashioned and shaped by the 



A Doubt which is Significant. 185 

lower animals do or do not come under the cate- 
gory of " works of Nature," then this very doubt or 
hesitation is itself significant. It shows that there 
are points of contact between the two categories 
so close that we can hardly say to which of them 
certain things belong. It shows that the distinction 
is one of degrees, and that there are departments, 
as it were, in Nature so much higher than others, 
that they seem to rise above the level of her physi- 
cal domain. 

And this aspect of the matter in question will 
grow upon us the more closely we regard it. For 
whatever doubt we may have as to the classification 
we should assign to the stick which the Beaver had 
prepared, we can have no doubt whatever as to the 
classification we should assign to the Implement by 
which the Beaver had prepared it. These two 
•deep incisions by which it had been cut were the 
marks of the tools which had been employed. 
Those tools were the Beaver's teeth. But these 
teeth are, beyond all question, works of Nature. 
In themselves they are nothing more than specially 
adapted forms of the four front teeth, two in each 
jaw, which are common to the great group of ani- 
mals constituting the Order " Rodentia " in the 
Mammalian Class. The Beaver has indeed another 
Implement also adapted to the special purpose of 
dam-building, which is altogether peculiar to itself, 



The Unity of Nature. 



and that is a flattened tail, which in its peculiar 
movements and powerful muscles is unlike the tail 
of any other rodent, or indeed of any other animal. 
The whole is an apparatus enabling the tail to be 
used with great force as a trowel for beating mud 
into the interstices of the timber, and for thus 
giving to the structure sufficient solidity and coher- 
ence to arrest and resist the flow of running water. 
This Implement of the tail is an unusually special 
adaptation to the end of dam-building, because it 
is more exceptional in its structure, being indeed 
absolutely unique in the organisation of the Mam- 
malia. And so the finished dam, even more than 
the single stick used in its construction, shows us 
that there is a gradual passage from things which 
beyond all doubt we should call works of Nature 
to other things which as certainly we should re- 
cognise as works of Art. 

And when this passage has been traced in the 
works of the lower animals, we recognise it as 
a passage which is not less obvious in the 
works of Man. The hand of a man we call 
a work of Nature, but the products of that hand 
we call works of Art. Yet it is needless to say 
that there is an indissoluble unity between the 
two. Just as the teeth and the tail and the 
whole physical structure and mental instincts of 
a Beaver are harmonious members of a series 



Works of Nature and Works of Art. 187 



leading up to engineering works of great strength 
and skill, so the hand of Man is the one great 
implement which is co-operant with a brain of in- 
definitely greater constructive ingenuity. In both 
cases the Organic Implements are classed as works 
of Nature. In both cases the works which they 
construct are classed as works of Art. And so 
the principle of the distinction which is uncon- 
sciously reflected in common speech is a prin- 
ciple which we can trace to its source. All 
living things are in themselves works of Nature, 
whilst all the works which they by their structure, 
and by their corresponding instincts, are enabled 
to execute are, in their measure and degree, works 
of Art. 

There is, in this distinction, as there generally 
is in the distinctions of common speech, a pro- 
found philosophy. Between the adapted structure 
of all living creatures and those other adapted 
structures which these creatures haye been fitted 
and formed to make, there is indeed no break of 
continuity, but there is the introduction of an inter- 
vening Personality, — of a living Will, however 
narrow its bounds, — of a derived and delegated 
power to do afresh, in small measures and degrees^ 
that same kind of work which, in much larger 
measures and degrees, has been done for them in 
their own structure, and for their own existence 



i88 



The Unity of Nature. 



and enjoyment. These works of living creatures 
are thus, as it were, works of Nature done by com- 
mission and at second-hand. A great distinction 
this, no doubt, — and all the greater in proportion 
as the delegation is less restricted and the com- 
mission is wider in the powers conferred ; but it is 
a distinction which is obviously subordinate, and 
lies wholly inside the larger definition which we 
must give to Nature when we consider how abso- 
lutely all the powers wielded by the Personality 
of all living creatures are delegated powers, given 
in and through adapted structures. Moreover, 
when we look at the infinite gradations under 
which Personality is constituted among living crea- 
tures, and how various are the degrees of freedom 
and of originating power which have been given 
to them, we must see that in this respect there is 
no distinction between the highest and the lowest. 
In this respect, I say — meaning by these words 
to specify the one characteristic of delegation, and 
not meaning to deny a vast difference in the gifts 
and powers which by virtue of that delegation are 
conveyed. 

Here is the confusion which exists in many 
minds. They fear that if their powers of thought 
and of contrivance are referred to that Organisation 
which is undoubtedly the work of Nature, these 
powers must be degraded into mere functions of 



All Commissioned Servants of Nature. 189 



organic or mechanical necessity. But the character 
of delegation does not in itself necessarily imply 
anything of the kind. Two men may be equally 
the agents of another, although the one is bound 
down by precise and imperative instructions, whilst 
the other is intrusted with a wide and a free dis- 
cretion. And so it is with that great army of 
living creatures which are all equally the births of 
Nature, but which hold innumerable ranks and 
commissions in her service. The work of some 
of them is menial, almost mechanical, and more 
or less unconscious. The work of others partakes 
in an ascending order of decrees of a larger and a 
larger share of Intelligence and of Will. Man is 
separated from all others by a great gulf in the 
measure in which he partakes of these. Nor will 
it make any difference in the argument if the mental 
gifts of Man are regarded as so immeasurably 
superior as to be " different in kind." This is a 
question of definition ; and although I know of no 
definition of Intelligence or of Will which does not 
include the lowest manifestations as well as the 
highest, yet it is unquestionably true that between 
the two ends of the scale there is a distance and a 
space which is, as it were, infinity. In Man new 
elements are added to those which are manifested 
in the lower animals, and these new elements make 
him almost as a God to them. But he cannot be 



190 



The Unity of Nature, 



as a God to himself; for if he sees a gulf below 
him, he is only too painfully aware that there is 
a much wider gulf above him. We may separate 
as widely as we please between Man and the 
Beasts; but in the general fact that in all his 
great powers and in his wide extent of freedom 
he is the creature and the child of the Natural 
System in which he lives, there is no difference 
at all. 

It results from this analysis that if Man is to be 
considered as separate from Nature because of 
the external relation in which, under certain aspects, 
he stands to the Physical Forces, and because of 
the necessity he is under in all his works of acting 
upon them ''from the outside," then the whole vast 
series of the lower animals must be considered as 
also separate from Nature, because of their like 
position, and because of the same necessity under 
which they lie. They all partake of that indivi- 
duality — of that separateness and of that voluntary 
power — in which Personality consists. Within some 
little area, however small, they are all free, and 
they all do whatever they may have to do by acting 
" from outside " on the materials and on the forces of • 
the world around them. Moreover, it results from 
this analysis that as Man and all other living beings 
are separate from Nature in this one aspect of their 
relations to her, so they are all equally united to, 



Unity Between Structure and Function. 1 9 1 

and form part of, Nature in that other aspect — far 
more intimate — which concerns their own physical 
Organisation. For that Organisation is a growth and 
not a manufacture. It is the work of the Physical 
Forces under the combinations which are effected 
by that particular agency which we know as Life. 
It is a further result of this analysis to show that 
in respect to the evidence of Intention there is 
an absolute unity — a perfect continuity — between 
the structure of every Organism and its works or 
doings. It can only make or do what the Ap- 
paratus given to it fits it and enables it to do. It 
is certain, therefore, that the same interpretation 
which applies to the work must apply to the Ap- 
paratus by which the work is done. If the human 
or anthropopsychic interpretation of the works and 
actions of all living Beings is the only interpreta- 
tion which explains them, it must be the only inter- 
pretation which explains the adapted structures 
through which these works and actions are per- 
formed. The reasoning must be false which 
admits the evidence of Will and Purpose in the 
comparatively limited degree in which these attri- 
butes are exhibited in the actions of the lower 
animals, whilst it denies them in the much larger 
degree in which they are exhibited in the fashion- 
ing of the tools with which they are supplied. If 
the anthropopsychic explanation of a Beaver's dam 



192 



The Unity of Nature. 



is the only explanation which would be tolerated by 
common sense, it is not less certainly the only ex- 
planation which can be satisfactory of the Beaver's 
teeth and of the Beaver's tail. 

And if there be ever any difficulty in accepting 
this conclusion because of the apparent difference 
between the methods by which Man attains his ends 
and the methods by which like ends are attained in 
Nature, let us considerwell in what that difference con- 
sists. Man — it is often said — works his Will in Nature, 
in so far as he can work it at all, by acting upon 
the chain of Physical Causation " from the outside.' 1 
In Nature no one can be seen working in a like posi- 
tion. Everything seems to us to be done from inside 
that chain, by action which not only appears to be 
automatic, but to be self-originated and self-sustained. 
But can we not see how slippery are the foundations 
on which this distinction rests ? We must feel and 
know how ignorant we are of the ultimate constitu- 
tion of things, and especially of the ultimate rela- 
tions of Mind and Matter. Moreover, we must feel 
and know that this is precisely the region of thought 
in which the anthropopsychic objection suggests 
itself. What accurate conception can we really form 
of that which is " outside " of the Physical Forces and 
that which is " inside " of them ? Yet this is the 
main distinction which strikes us between a growth 
and a manufacture^-between the adapted struc- 



Distinction of Outsidedness and Insidedness. 193 



tures of which Nature is so full and those other 
adapted structures which are made by ourselves 
and by other living creatures. 

Are we quite sure that this contrast of relative 
place between the agencies of Mind and the Forces 
of Matter is a real contrast in the nature of things, 
or a contrast which is apparent only ? May not our 
notions of what is outside and of what is inside of 
Nature be liable to the same kind of error which used 
formerly to affect our notions of downwardness and 
upwardness of direction on our own Globe ? No 
apparent distinction was once more fundamental in 
physics, and none interposed a greater obstacle in 
the way of accepting and understanding the real 
constitution of the Universe. How could there be 
an Antipodes where men and animals would hang 
with their heads downwards ? But this difficulty 
was cleared up when men came to understand 
that there is no such distinction as " downward- 
ness" and "upwardness" in absolute Space, and that 
although our perception of this distinction is not at 
all false or deceptive when it is properly understood, 
but, on the contrary, is perfectly true in its own 
limited sphere, it is the perception of a truth which 
is local, as it were, and relative, and does not stand 
in any contradiction whatever with the higher truths 
which affirmed that a habitable Antipodes was pos- 
sible, because the same absolute direction which is- 

N 



The Unity of Nature. 



upwards on one side of the Globe would be down- 
wards upon the other. It is perfectly true that 
downwardness is a fact of consciousness to us ; but 
it depends upon the direction in which the force of 
gravitation is felt as exerting its greatest energy 
upon our bodies. In like manner the outwardness of 
our own mental relation to the Physical Forces over 
which we exercise some control is a fact of conscious- 
ness, and so likewise is our own impression as to the 
apparent inwardness of the agencies which work in 
Nature. But this contrast is one which may well be 
apparent only, and may be the mere result of the in- 
visibility of the forces by which the motions of Mat- 
ter are effected. The truth is, that when we come 
to think of it, we never do believe that the visible 
motions of Matter which appear to be spontaneous 
and self-determined, can be so in reality. We always 
conceive of these motions as due to some " force n 
acting outside the matter which is moved. Our idea 
of Causality always does, and always must, go behind 
-and beyond the Visible ; and so we can readily under- 
stand how it is that the Physical Forces must of neces- 
sity seem to us to be working " by themselves," when 
in reality they may be working under a strict control. 

Two circumstances in our own experience may 
help us better to understand how all difficulty on 
this subject may easily arise from exclusive attention 
to partial aspects of the truth. One of these circum- 
stances is this — that in our own bodily Organism the 



Sources of Delusion in Regard to Inwardness. 1 9 5 

two apparently contradictory aspects of the relation- 
ship of Mind to Matter are both present, and are 
both continually observed. The passage from move- 
ments which are wholly internal and automatic to 
other movements over which the Mind has usually 
an outward and complete control, is a passage of 
insensible gradations. The second of these circum- 
stances is this, that the most ingenious of all human 
machines — those in which Mind is most present 
and most triumphant — are precisely those in which 
the Physical Forces have most the appearance of 
acting by their own internal energies, and by nothing 
else. Almost all the machines which are employed 
in the service of civilised life, even the most simple, 
when first seen by Savages, are supposed by them 
to be living creatures, because, in their own limited 
experience, they have no conception of mental pur- 
pose, intention, or contrivance reaching so far by 
means of mere external action upon the natural 
forces. It never occurs to them that it may be all 
done by acting upon those forces precisely as they 
themselves act upon them in the shaping of a spear 
or in the aiming of an arrow. They conclude, 
therefore, that the action of the machine is analo- 
gous to that other kind of action with which they 
are even more familiar, and which does much more 
complicated things, namely, the kind of action by 
which they move their own bodily Organs. This 



196 



The Unity of Nature. 



kind of action is from a source which is inward, and 
constitutes the special power of a living Personality. 

Now we can very well understand that in respect 
to our knowledge of and resource over Nature we 
are all comparatively in the position of children or 
of Savages, and our conclusions as to the limits of 
mental action upon Matter, or of the relative place 
in which Mind may take its stand in causing the 
subject movements of Material Force, we may very 
easily be liable to the same delusions. Limited as 
our knowledge and resources are, it is, nevertheless, 
wonderful what we ourselves can make the Physical 
Forces do in the way of representing, fulfilling, and 
embodying the purposes of Mind. It may sound 
strange, but it is nevertheless strictly true, that we 
can and do make machines with the power and the 
faculty of self-control. There is a well-known part 
of the steam-engine which is called the "governor." 
It is what its name implies. When the energy of the 
steam is excessive for its intended work, it is the 
function of the "governor" to restrain and limit the 
supply of that energy to every part of the machine, 
and amongst others to itself. With a sensitiveness as 
delicate as that of any living thing, and with an 
instantaneousness of action which exceeds that of 
the most resolute and wakeful Will, this function 
of watchfulness and restraint is perfectly discharged. 
To all outward appearance, and in a certain sense 



The Seemingly Automatic Really Outside, 197 



in reality and in truth, this action has its origin 
inside the machine. A mode of action which is 
essentially variable and contingent is yet due to rigid 
Physical Causation, and has all the appearance of 
being part of the chain of cause and effect which 
men speak of as fixed and unalterable. This 
variable action arises as a necessary consequence 
out of those invariable laws of motion, to which 
" centrifugal force " is due. And yet all this ap- 
pearance of inwardness and of spontaneousness in 
the action of the governor of a steam-engine is — 
not false indeed, but — a partial and imperfect aspect 
of the truth. In reality it is the work of Mind. In 
reality its source lies outside the chain of Physical 
Causation, — in that power which stands behind it 
and above it, and which uses the rigidity and uni- 
formity of the Physical Forces as the instrument of 
its own varying intentions. 

This is an example which enables us to under^ 
stand how widely, and indeed how universally, and 
yet how secretly and invisibly, the same principle 
may prevail in the System of Nature. In all its 
mechanism those actions which appear to us to be 
automatic may well be so only in the same sense. 
They work " of themselves ; " but then they can 
work as they do only because those "selves" are 
adjusted to do certain things. There are many 
automatic movements in our own bodies which are 



198 



The Unity of Nature. 



a perfect illustration of this principle — such, for 
example, as the Apparatus which watches against 
the introduction of food into the wrong passage of 
the throat, and shuts it off, or coughs it out, by 
sensitive and convulsive actions which are entirely 
beyond the control of the Will. All these automatic 
movements and all the Apparatus by which they are 
effected are the work of Nature, as distinguished 
from the work of Man ; and yet they all may be 
equally effected by some action originating outside 
the chain of mere Physical Causation. The im- 
mediate adequacy of that causation to produce 
mechanically the observed effects has nothing to do 
with the question. In both the instances which I 
have just cited that adequacy can be perfectly traced 
and explained. In the one case — that of the 
governor in a steam-engine, the flying apart of two 
whirling balls is made by connecting rods to lift a 
valve, and the more violently the balls are whirled 
by any excess of steam, the more they fly asunder, 
and consequently the more they lift the rods and 
close the valve. In the other case, that of the 
Apparatus for protecting the windpipe, a nerve of 
extreme sensitiveness and irritability is spread over 
a particular muscular surface, and the contact or 
passage of any foreign body at once produces auto- 
matically a violent and convulsive contraction. In 
like manner and in close proximity there is another 



Axiom of the Intelligibility of Nature. 199 



similar Apparatus with an exactly opposite purpose 
— an Apparatus which, instead of rejecting foreign 
matter, is, on the contrary, made to seize it and 
force it down the passage which it ought to take. 
But all these chains of Physical Causation are made 
into "chains" by links which are joined, not by 
necessity or by accident, but by Adjustment for the 
discharge of a particular function. In neither case 
is the Physical Causation intelligible without refer- 
ence to the special end to which it is directed. 

And here we come upon a doctrine or abstract 
proposition which, like the elementary propositions 
of Euclid, bears upon the face of it all the characters 
of an axiomatic truth. Strange to say, it is often 
quoted now as a stronghold of Materialistic philo- 
sophy, and as establishing the all-sufficiency of 
purely mechanical explanations. That doctrine is 
this — that the foundation of all science is confidence 
in the Intelligibility of Nature.*" 5 " And never was 
there any axiom with a richer meaning, — never any 
with wider or more searching developments of truth. 
It is an axiom which asserts that the system of 
Nature is in close correspondence with the Intelli- 
gence of Man. But this correspondence must be 
with the whole of Man's Intelligence, and not with 
a bit of it only. Those who try to restrict it to a 
part of our Intelligence, and that part certainly not. 

* Lange's " Hist, of Materialism." Transla. vol. iii. p. 20. 



2 : d 



77/^ Unity of Nature. 



the highest part, are not reasoning in consistency 
with the axiom, but in defiance of it, They are 
taking; its name in vain. The doctrine of the In- 
telligibility of Nature demands that this Intelligi- 
bility should be coextensive with the whole range 
of Man's Intelligence, and must embrace especially 
the higher faculties as well as the lower. Those 
which perceive the reason of things must be in- 
cluded as well as those which perceive their causes 
merely. This is the scientific basis on which we 
can affirm with certainty that the anthropopsychic 
view of phenomena, when duly understood and 
limited, is at least one most just and necessary 
aspect of the truth. If the Intelligibility of Nature 
demands that we should trust our mechanical facul- 
ties when they recognise the relation between com- 
pleted structure and actual performance, it demands 
not less clearly that we should trust those other 
intellectual faculties which recognise the relation 
between the preparation of that structure, and some 
"foresight of its work. In the System of Nature 
there is no break of continuity between these two. 
There is a perfect passage and a perfect unit}'. 

The assertion is often made, but is quite unfounded, 
that the explanations which consist in the perception 
of Purpose are obliged to fly to the dark places of 
Nature, where mechanical explanations have not 
yet been, or may never be discovered. The con- 



Purpose Clearest where Catcses Ascertai7ied. 201 

trary is the truth. Nowhere does the light of Pur-^ 
pose shine more clearly to our Intelligence than in 
those adaptations of Nature in which her machinery 
and her means have been most perfectly explored. 
In some cases it is the extreme simplicity, in other 
•cases it is the extreme complexity, of the means 
employed which most strikes us with wonder and 
admiration. But in no case does our perception of 
mechanical causes obliterate or supersede our per- 
ception of the aims to which these causes have been 
made subordinate. These two perceptions are not 
antagonistic, but complementary. Neither is com- 
plete without the other. But of the two, our percep- 
tion of aims is perhaps the best able to stand alone. 
The most perfect ascertainment of mechanical cause, 
the clearest explanations of animal structure and of 
Apparatus which are attainable by us, must neces- 
sarily be incomplete, even in the purely mechanical 
point of view, because they leave untouched the 
mystery attaching to the special combinations of 
elementary substances and of elementary forces out 
of which all such structures are built, and by means 
of which all their appropriate mechanical effects 
are reached. But when our Intelligence has once 
recognised in any natural action the discharge of 
a particular function and the adaptation of means 
to a definite end, it is able to repose upon that 
perception as affording full and adequate satisfac- 



202 



The Unity of N attire. 



tion to some at least of the highest of our mental 
faculties. It is true, indeed, that this perception 
does not attain the rank of an ultimate truth, for the 
simple reason that, high as the faculties are which 
recognise the reason of a thing, there are other 
faculties higher still, which seek to know where 
that Reason — that Logos — is seated, and what is 
the place of its habitation. This, however, is a 
question belonging to another category. It passes 
into the region of Theology. But the impossibility 
of answering it by the methods of mere physical 
research does not imply the smallest doubt in the 
truthfulness of those perceptions which in the course 
of that research see and recognise the Reasonable- 
ness of Nature. The doctrine of the Intelligibility of 
Nature does indeed guarantee the correspondence 
of our faculties with her operations so far as those 
faculties carry us. But it does not affirm that our 
Intelligence is co-extensive with the whole domain 
of knowledge. We may be absolutely sure that 
we are right when our Reason recognises .another 
Reason in the machinery of Nature, although we 
may be wholly unable to discover more than a 
few of the conditions under which that Reason 
works. 

It is here that the deceptions of a really false 
and spurious Anthropomorphism — properly so- 
called — begin to work. Mind in ourselves is in- 



Mind Presupposed in Structure of the Brain. 203 



separately connected with organised Matter, and 
especially with a Brain. Of the nature of this 
connection we really know nothing. All the 
attempts to explain it, or even to express it, are 
empty words. But the inference or conclusion that 
Mind cannot exist, or cannot be recognised, except 
when seated in a Brain, is evidently the rudest and 
coarsest conception in which Anthropomorphism 
could possibly be embodied.* It is erecting the 
Form of Man into a necessity of thought. It is 
assuming that Form to be the only form through 
which thought can be exerted, or in which Mind 
can exist. Even if we could see no obvious ab- 
surdity in such an idea, it would still be unsupported 
by any reasonable argument. But we can see very 
clearly at least one consideration which suggests 
that this idea not only may possibly be absurd, 
but is probably absurd, from facts and considera- 
tions which are perfectly accessible to our Intelli- 
gence. One of these facts is this— that the Brain 
itself has all the characters of a machine constructed 
for a purpose. Its elaborate mechanism — unex- 
hausted and apparently unexhaustible to us in the 
subtlety and complexity of its structure, — with its 
ramifications of nervine tissues permeating every 
portion of the body, and constituting the very 

* " Science knows only one kind of Mind, that is, human." — Lange : 
" History of Materialism," vol. iii. p. 73. 



204 



The Unity of Nature. 



essence of every special Organ, — some of them 
being the channels of all receptive, and others 
the channels of all reactive powers, — this wonder- 
ful mechanism is visibly to our Intelligence an 
Organ — an Apparatus. Now we can perfectly 
understand the possibility of machines which are in 
a sense self-acting, and, within certain limits, self- 
regulating. But we cannot conceive any machine 
which, in the fullest sense of the word, is self-made 
and self-originated. The Intelligibility of Nature 
negatives this idea as nonsense and self-contradic- 
tion. It demands, therefore, that an Apparatus 
should be regarded as a result of preparation, and 
it demands farther that the agency which prepares 
cannot be the same as the product which is pre- 
pared. The Brain, therefore, instead of appearing 
to our Intelligence as the only conceivable seat 
and shrine of Mind, is recognised by Reason as an 
Apparatus prepared by Mind for the play and exhi- 
bition of some little loan or emanation from itself, 
with a definite and prescribed sphere of Perception 
and of Thought. It is, as it were, a little pool drawn 
from an illimitable Ocean, and so set round and 
girdled by containing walls as to reflect only its own 
little prospect of the world, and its own little patch 
of sky. Here, as elsewhere, — here in this most 
secret arcanum of Nature, — we perceive that same 
outsidedness of Mind in its relation to Matter of 



Constructive Agency Outside the Apparahcs. 205 



which we seem to be conscious in the operations 
of our own Intelligence when it works out its own 
resolves and makes the elements and the Forces of 
Nature subject to them. 

It appears, then, that, on close examination, the 
one great distinction which is sometimes supposed 
to separate fundamentally between the mechanisms 
of Nature and the mechanisms of Man — namely, 
that Man acts from " outside the chain of cause and 
effect," whilst Nature works from " inside " that 
chain — is a distinction which vanishes away. The 
Apparatuses of Nature do not even seem to us 
to be self-constructed, and our instinctive sense of 
the Intelligibility of Nature renders it impossible 
that we should so regard them. The constructive 
Agency, wherever its ultimate seat may be, is cer- 
tainly and almost visibly outside the materials with 
which it works. The only difference is this — that 
whereas we are ourselves conscious of standing 
outside the chain of mere Physical Causation in a 
very limited sense and in a very limited degree, the 
constructive Agency in Nature seems to stand out- 
side and above it in a measure and decree which is 
unattainable to us. 

And here it is most significant to observe, that 
the progress of physical research, instead of tending 
to obliterate or to narrow, is tending, on the con- 
trary, to broaden and deepen the distinction between 



206 



The Unity of Nature. 



the bare Elements of Matter or the Physical Forces 
of Nature and the complicated structures which have 
been erected out of them. In all departments of 
science the power and dominance of abstract concep- 
tions in the interpretations of Nature has become so 
much more and more conspicuous that it is daily 
found more and more profitable to explain, and 
more and more possible to predict, the most elabo- 
rate series of phenomena by the processes of arith- 
metical calculation, and of mathematical analysis. 
And where mathematical explanations fail, there 
other mental conceptions of a still higher order step 
in, and are ever carrying us to loftier and : loftier 
summits in the Intelligibility of Nature. Above all 
others, perhaps, the science of Chemistry has made 
discoveries — corroborated more and more by in- 
vestigations purely physical — which have cast an 
entirely new light on the ultimate constitution of 
material things. Let us look for a little on what 
this light is and in what its novelty consists. 



CHAPTER VI. 

On the Elementary Constitution of Matter 
in Relation to the Inorganic. 

HP HE Materialistic Philosophers of the ancient 
world nad reached by purely speculative 
thought some conceptions as to the constitution of 
Matter which have a curious likeness to the con- 
ceptions of modern science. It would be wrong 
to say that this likeness is superficial. The corres- 
pondence between ideas reached in early ages by ab- 
stract reasoning or by intuitive perception, and ideas 
reached in modern times as the result of physical 
research, is one of the most instructive incidents in 
the history of human thought. It is a correspond- 
ence pointing unmistakably to the close consan- 
guinity of the Mind of Man with the whole System 
of external Nature, and to the consequent fidelity 
of its general impressions when it looks into that 
System with scarcely any other apparatus than its 
own thoughtful and inquiring gaze, It is thus that 



208 



The Unity of Nature. 



the early Greek philosophers had conceived the 
idea of Atoms as the ultimate particles of Matter, 
and they were full of curious imaginations as to 
the important, and indeed the fundamental part 
which they played in the constitution of the Uni- 
verse. We know that a similar idea, or at least an 
idea which finds its best expression in the same 
word, lies at the very root of the conceptions which 
have been reached by modern science. But modern 
science has discovered the inseparable connection 
between this idea of Atoms and other physical 
conceptions of which the Ancients knew nothing. 
They had an idea indeed of Matter consisting of 
ultimate particles, and they had an idea, too, that 
these particles were not so much indivisible as 
practically undivided. Their acute and subtle in- 
tellects could not fail to see that an Atom, in the 
strictest sense of the word, is inconceivable. Every- 
thing which has any extension, however small, must 
be conceived as divisible. They saw, therefore, 
that the ultimate Atoms of which Matter consists 
can only be ultimate, not because they can be abso- 
lutely indivisible, but because as a fact they never 
are divided. 

There is a wonderful and instructive coincidence 
here between ideas based upon the research of out- 
ward things, and the older ideas based upon the 
search of the human Spirit into its own conceptions. 



Ancient and Modern Atomism. 209 



But the search into outward things has carried us 
farther now — into new and more wonderful regions 
of speculation and of thought. In the idea of an 
Atom — divisible indeed, but never divided — break- 
able, but never broken — the Ancients had got hold 
of an idea which gave them the unit of mechanical 
aggregation. It gave them, as it were, the bricks or 
the prepared stones out of which the edifices of 
Nature have been reared. But it gave them nothing 
more. It gave them no conception of the build- 
ing process. It gave them no conception how the 
bricks and stones could be put together— some to 
serve the purpose of foundations, others to serve 
the purpose of walls and of chambers, — and of pas- 
sages of communication, — and of batteries of force, 
— and of centres of energy, — whilst others again are 
made to range themselves in ever-varying lines of 
ornament and of beauty. 

I do not say that modern science has explained 
this fully. Very far from it. But it has explained it 
in a measure and degree by the discovery of agen- 
cies, of forces, and of energies determining the move- 
ments of Atoms, of which the ancient philosophers 
had not even the most distant dream. They knew 
—indeed they could not help knowing — something 
of the idea of Force as it is exerted in the human 
body, and also as it is exerted among dead things in. 

the phenomena of Weight. But these were the only 

o 



2IO 



The Unity of Nature, 



forces, the only sources of energy, of which they 
had any notion ; and even as regards the pheno- 
mena of Weight, they had no idea of the mys- 
tery which attaches to the Force which we now 
know as the Force of Gravitation. Perhaps even 
in the present day we do not sufficiently estimate 
that mystery. The sense of Weight in ourselves, 
and the universality of its effects on the things 
around us, make it so familiar that we are apt to 
regard it as a thing of course, and as needing no 
explanation whatever. And yet the physical causes 
of Gravitation are absolutely unknown. Why and 
how it is that the particles of Matter are drawn or 
impelled towards each other in direct proportion 
to each other's mass, and in a definite inverse pro- 
portion to the distance from each other, is quite in- 
explicable in the present state of our knowledge. 
Attraction is almost certainly not what 'it appears 
to us to be. " Action at a distance " is not really 
conceivable ; so that when two distant bodies seem 
to exert any influence on each other, the effect must 
be really due to some intervening medium by which 
they are pushed or pulled. But assuming the 
mutual attraction of all the particles of Matter as 
the provisional expression of an ultimate fact, it 
goes but a very little way indeed towards explain- 
ing the constitution of Nature as we see it. The 
ancient Materialists made as much of it as they 



Crude Conceptions of the Old Materialism. 2 1 1 



could. They conceived the existing Order of 
Nature to have been evolved out of the mere 
clash of Atoms. And no doubt the mutual attrac- 
tion of the particles of Matter under the Force of 
Gravitation may account for the condensation — that 
is to say, for the mere aggregation of them. It 
may indeed account for a great deal more, because 
it is possible that all the energies of Heat and 
Light may be due to Gravitation. Various hypo- 
theses involving this idea have appeared from time 
to time ; and nearly thirty years ago Sir W. Thom- 
son lent the high authority of his name to a theory 
in which Gravitation was made to account for all the 
Light, Heat, and Motions of the Universe. But this 
is a conception far beyond the knowledge of the 
Ancients. They simply generalised from the ordi- 
nary phenomena of Force and Weight. The idea 
of motion is of course involved and presupposed, 
and the further idea of eccentric clashing among 
the Atoms leads to the conception of movements in 
circles, in ellipses, or in vortices. 

These conceptions supply almost the whole fur- 
niture of the old Materialism ; and it is a curious 
fact that there is a distinct tendency in modern 
Materialism to lower and impoverish the language 
of science down to the level of that pre-scientific 
age. Even those who have no tendency to theo- 
retical Materialism are very apt to adopt language 



212 



The Unity of Nature. 



which reproduces nothing but the crude conceptions 
of the Lucretian philosophy. Thus it has become 
almost a cant expression amongst writers on physics 
and on physiology to ascribe every property ex- 
hibited in Matter, whether that Matter be dead or 
whether it be connected with vitality, to what they 
call its " molecular constitution." Now the word 
" Molecule " has been appropriated by general agree- 
ment among chemists and physicists to those par- 
ticles of Matter which are the units of cohesion or 
of mechanical aggregation, as distinguished from the 
Atom which is the unit of chemical combination. 
The Molecule is a group of Atoms so united that 
no mechanical force can shake* them loose. All the 
mechanical forces, therefore, find the Molecule to be 
an indivisible Unit, and can only deal with it as such. 
Chemical Force alone can get at the Atom. No 
other force can sunder the combinations into which 
it enters. A compound substance may undergo the 
most violent changes — it may be ground to dust, it 
may be melted into liquid, it may be dissipated into 
gas, and yet its molecular group of Atoms will re- 
main intact. The Molecule of a compound sub- 
stance, however changed in form, is still the same 
compound of the same elementary Atoms which 
constituted the substance before its change. Thus 
the Molecule of water, when driven by heat into the 
form of steam, is as much a chemical compound of 



" Molecular Constitution n an Evasion. 213 



oxygen and hydrogen as it was when it cohered 
with other molecules more closely in the liquid 
form, or less closely in the solid form of ice. On 
the other hand, the Molecule of an elementary sub- 
stance and the unit of its mechanical aggregation, 
may be either a little group of its own Atoms, or it 
may be these Atoms single and alone. It will be 
seen, then, that the phrase " molecular constitution " 
is a phrase which essentially expresses, and always 
suggests, the idea of mere cohesion, or of mere 
mechanical a£2fre£ation, and of nothing else. 

When, therefore, the profoundest distinctions 
which exist in Nature, as. for instance, the distinc- 
tion between a Germ that is to develop into a Reptile 
or a Bird, and the Germ which is to develop into a 
Man — when this distinction is spoken of as depend- 
ing on the " molecular constitution" of the two 
Germs, the phrase either means nothing, and be- 
comes a mere formula for concealing ignorance, G r 
else it is a phrase which means that the most diverse 
issues of Organisation and of Life depend on nothing 
else than differences of mechanical arrangement in 
the ultimate particles of Matter. Now although 
science is helpless to explain all that we desire to 
know in these deep questions, it has taught us quite 
enough to enable us to see that the explanation sug- 
gested in this kind of language is certainly untrue. 
We can see, and we can be absolutely sure, that not 



214 



The Unity of Nature, 



only the mere aggregation, but even the orderly 
arrangement of the ultimate particles of Matter, is 
not the cause, but the consequence and effect, of the 
energies which work in chemical and in vital phe- 
nomena. It is not only a rude and coarse concep- 
tion, but we are now entitled to say that it is an 
ignorant conception of the System of material things, 
that it consists essentially in mere aggregation or 
in movements arising out of the accidents of me- 
chanical collision. It was not a very rational con- 
ception even in the ages when the human mind 
had little to go upon beyond the vague impressions 
it derived from a very few obvious facts. But in 
these days, when a whole world of new and won- 
derful discoveries has been opened to our view in 
respect to the nature and properties of material 
Atoms, it is not too much to say that any return to 
this conception now is a return to the beggarly ele- 
ments of an exploded superstition. 

The Atom of modern chemical science is a very 
different thing from the Atom of ancient speculation. 
Both in itself and in the powers with which it is in- 
vested in its relation to other things, the Atom of 
science is a new conception. In itself it is no longer 
an ultimate particle merely because there is no 
agency capable of dividing it. Its relation to Matter 
is no longer like that of a grain of sand, or of a mote 
of dust, to the rock or to the stuff from which it has 



The A torn of Modern Science. 2 1 5 



been derived. All these are as it were accidental 
products, having neither form, nor size, nor weight 
which is constant or invariable. But it is the car- 
dinal idea of the new conception that the Atom 
of each elementary substance is, as it were, and 
as Sir J. Herschel has called it, a "manufactured 
article," — that is to say, that it has properties which 
are not necessary, but contingent and artificial. In 
particular it is absolutely uniform in size and weight. 
This absolute identity and -uniformity obtains in 
every elementary Atom, not only in this world but in 
all the most distant worlds of space. The Atom of 
hydrogen, for example, seems to have absolutely the 
same properties whether it is seen in the light of the 
great stars Sirius and Arcturus or in the decomposi- 
tion of water on our own Globe. In both places the 
molecule of hydrogen executes its vibrations in pre- 
cisely the same time. That the sciences of Physics 
and of Chemistry confirm each other in asserting the 
absolute ' unity and uniformity of the Atom. We 
have no knowledge of any natural process by which 
such absolute Units of Mass with identity of pro- 
perties can be produced. Professor Clerk Maxwell, 
speaking of these facts, and following up the opinion 
embodied in the dictum of Sir John Herschel, has 
declared that " each molecule throughout the Uni- 
verse bears impressed upon it the stamp of a. 
Metric System as distinctly as does the metre of 



2l6 



The Unity of Natter e. 



the Archives at Paris or the double royal cubit of 
the Temple at Carnac." 

But great as the difference is in this respect be- 
tween the Atom of the ancients and the Atom of 
science, there are other differences which are even 
greater and more significant. These greater differ- 
ences affect not merely what the Atom is, but what 
the Atom does. It is not merely in its physical con- 
stitution and definition, but in its powers and func- 
tions, that a new world has been opened up in the 
doctrines of Materialism by the idea of the Atom as 
scientifically conceived. It is no longer a mere par- 
ticle dashing about at random under the impulse of 
projectile or gravitating force. In some respects 
indeed it has lost certain ideal and mysterious pro- 
perties which the ancient Materialists imagined as 
belonging to it. It is no longer regarded as infi- 
nitely small, or as infinitely hard and strong, or as 
absolutely impenetrable, or as so absolutely single 
as to be in itself destitute of parts. On the contrary, 
it is now conceived as " already quite a complex 
little world," as a " piece of matter of measurable 
dimensions, with shape, motion, and laws of action 
which are intelligible subjects of scientific investiga- 
tion." The Atoms of some particular substances in 
the gaseous state have been approximately counted, 
approximately weighed and measured ; whilst the 
average velocity of their movements in a certain 



The Elementary Atoms of Chemistry. 2 17 



length of path has been made the subject of mathe- 
matical calculation. 

So far it may be thought that the old Atom has 
been disenchanted of its mystery, and has been 
brought down into the terms of purely mechanical 
conception. But this is only one-half of the truth — 
one aspect only of the discoveries of modern science 
in respect to the nature and functions of the Atom. 
Whatever of mystery has been subtracted on that 
side has been far more than added on another. 
The dynamic aspect now underlies the mechanical 
aspect, and forms, as it were, an investing medium, 
which not only surrounds but permeates the Atom and 
all its works. In the light of Chemistry the Atom 
comes out as the centre and the focus of energies 
and powers the most complicated and the most subtle 
that exist in Nature — so complicated and so subtle 
indeed, that the utmost resources of chemical and 
physical research are unable as yet to give of them 
anything like a complete or even an intelligible 
account. In the first place, the Atom is not one 
thing, but many things. Each of the elementary 
substances has its own separate Atom, with its own 
separate size, its own separate weight, and its own 
separate properties. In the second place, these 
properties are not absolute, but strictly relative to 
the corresponding properties of the Atoms of other 
substances which may be contiguous. Thus the 



2l8 



The Unity of Nature. 



Atom of oxygen is totally different from the Atom 
of carbon, and the nature of the difference consists, 
in so far as we can understand it at all, not only in 
differences of size and weight, but even more essen- 
tially in different dynamic relations of attraction 
which these elements bear to each other, and to 
the Atoms of other substances. 

Moreover, these relations of chemical attraction 
are curiously governed or limited by numerical 
laws, which have tasked the ingenuity of chemists 
to express in language. The power of one Atom 
to attract to itself and to combine with a definite 
number of other Atoms, and no more, is called its 
" Valency ; " and according to the number which 
is the limit of its power it is called bi-valent, or 
tri-valent, or tetra-valent. Further, these relations 
between one elementary Atom and another have 
nothing to do with, or are at least wholly different 
from, the relation of gravitation. In Chemical Force 
Atoms do indeed attract each other, but not in a 
manner or degree which has any reference to each 
other's mass. The Atom of oxygen, for example, 
when in contact with the Atom of one substance, 
such as nitrogen, may be absolutely passive and 
inert, whilst in the presence of the Atom of another 
substance, such as hydrogen or carbon, it will mani- 
fest the most intense activity. Then, again, the 
nature of that activity, and of the activity of all 



Chemical Combinations, 2 1 9 



other Atoms under the action of Chemical Force is 
peculiar. It cannot exert itself at all across any- 
measurable distance. Chemical combination requires 
the closest contiguity, if not actual contact, and very 
often this contiguity or contact can only be brought 
about under conditions of heat or of solution, which 
must be carefully prepared. But when this conti- 
guity has been brought about, then chemical com- 
bination is the activity of violent attraction, resulting 
in a kind of union or combination the most intimate 
and the most absolute which is known or can be 
conceived. Indeed, so close and so intimate are the 
unions effected by Chemical Force, that it is really 
not possible in the present state of our knowledge 
to conceive the ultimate nature of them. # 

* Sir B. Brodie, in his interesting, but I venture to think, obscure 
Lecture on "Ideal Chemistry," published in 1880, has said that 
whilst " various hypotheses, both metaphysical and atomic, 
have been framed to explain what (chemical) combination consists 
in, such hypotheses have not thrown the slightest light upon the 
question." Yet in the same Lecture he makes two contributions 
towards an explanation — both of them illustrating the hopeless- 
ness of the task. "Combination," he says, "is the operation by 
which matter is packed into space.'* Again, he says that " we must 
enlarge our view of the nature of combination, so as to include 
under this term not only the combination of matter with matter, but 
the combination also of matter with space." I presume this must 
mean the combination of ponderable matter with the luminiferous 
medium which is supposed to occupy all space. In any other sense a 
combination of matter with space seems devoid of any intelligible 
meaning. On the other hand, although it is possible and even pro- 
bable that the "Ether" may play some part in chemical combina- 
tion, no light is thrown upon the whole operation by the mere 
suggestion of so vague a proposition. 



220 



The Unity of Nahtrt 



Two facts, however, respecting Chemical Force 
are certainly known. One of these facts is, that the 
unions it effects do not depend on mere mass, but 
are essentially selective — that they are possible only 
between certain kinds of Atoms, and are compara- 
tively easy or comparatively difficult between other 
Atoms according to relations which we cannot under- 
stand, but which, for the want of a better word, are 
called Affinities. The other fact respecting these 
unions which we*know is, that they are absolutely 
governed by curious numerical relations which are 
fixed and unalterable, or which, if they vary at all, 
vary according to some other numerical rule, which 
seems generally, if not always, to be a rule of exact 
multiple proportion. It is the first of these two facts 
which is perhaps the highest mystery of all. The 
selective attraction towards each other which exists 
between the Atoms of particular substances is called 
their Chemical Affinity. But affinity, like so many 
other words of science as well as of common speech, 
is a word which, when applied to material Atoms, 
involves a metaphor. Affinity between living things 
means, ordinarily, blood-relationship. Affinity be- 
tween minds and characters means, in a secondary 
sense, a likeness of dispositions or a similarity of 
pursuits. In neither of these senses can Affinity 
be applied to the ultimate particles of Matter. But 
Chemical Affinity is not only different from, but it 



Chemical Affinity. 



221 



presents a positive contrast with, Affinity as under- 
stood in any sense analogous to these. The Affinity 
of Atoms is not only not founded upon likeness, but 
one of its commonest characteristics is that it is 
founded on unlikeness and on contrast. Homo- 
gfeneousness is favourable to mere mechanical mix- 
tures. But heterogeneousness is essential to most 
forms of chemical combination. Atoms combine, 
for the most part, not because they are like, but 
because they are radically different. It is now- 
held that Atoms of the same kind may combine 
like Atoms of a different kind. But it seems 
doubtful if the Atoms in this case are not rather 
cohering than combined. At all events, in the 
language of Chemistry, affinity means nothing but 
the mutual tendency to combine — a tendency which 
may be so vehement as to be explosive, or so gentle 
as to be one of the slowest and most imperceptible 
operations of Nature. And then, when Chemical 
Affinity has had its way, we have a combination 
which is as mysterious as its cause. It is funda- 
mentally different from a mere mixture or aggre- 
gation. It is essentially a Structure with energies 
as definite as its proportions. Under its influence 
the separate components may drop all the charac- 
teristics and all the properties by which they were 
recognised before ; and the new compound acquires 



222 



The Unity of Nature. 



other properties and other characteristics entirely 
different from those of any of its parts. 

Now, amid all the mysteries involved in these 
facts — amid all the questions and problems which 
they suggest, and which are wholly unsolved, and 
are perhaps insoluble, — there is one characteristic of 
them which stands out as clearly as the light of day. 
These complicated automatic Forces of Nature are 
of such a character as to lend themselves to artificial 
manipulation in measures and degrees of inex- 
haustible variety. In them, more conspicuously, 
perhaps, than anywhere else in Nature, the most 
absolute fixedness and rigidity of " laws " is seen to 
be not only compatible with, but to be the one 
essential condition of, that largest freedom in the 
ultimate agencies of Mind which we can only think 
of as a freedom outside the physical chain of cause 
and of effect, but with boundless opportunity and 
means of acting upon that chain, and bending it to 
Purpose. Nowhere in Nature have such powerful 
and subtle instruments been placed in the hands of 
Will. We see and know this to be not only a 
possibility but a fact by our own very limited 
experience in the Laboratory. We see it and know 
it by the immense resources which even a very 
imperfect knowledge of Chemical Force has placed, 
and is daily more and more placing in our hands. 
We see it and know it, above all, in the nature of the 



Chemistry as an Instrument of Purpose. 223 

methods by which these resources are made avail- 
able, and in which they consist. Do we wish to 
break up some natural substance into the elements 
of which it is composed, so that we may have some 
one of these elements separated from the rest, and so 
that it may serve some purpose which it will not 
serve when it is combined ? We have only to 
introduce into the compound which we seek to 
break up some new element to which the Affinity of 
our desired element is stronger, and thereupon that 
desired element rushes to the nearer friend we offer 
to its embrace, and leaves all others with which it 
had been associated before. Do we wish, on the 
other hand, to make some artificial combination of 
elements which are generally separate in Nature, 
and so to produce a substance which we know will 
have special properties, and therefore some special 
use ? Exactly the same method in principle must 
be pursued. We bring together and place in close 
contact, under known conditions of heat or of 
solution, elements which we know to have mutual 
Affinities, and which under those conditions will 
have those Affinities set free to act. And then, 
these conditions having been brought about, the 
chemical Affinities exert their force, and forthwith 
some new substance is born into the world with 
powers and energies the most subtle or the most 
tremendous. In the Inorganic world it may dis- 



224 



The Unity of Nature. 



solve the most refractory metals, or rend asunder 
the hardest rocks. In the Organic world its very 
touch may be death to every living thing, or it may 
exercise on the Organism the most blessed virtue, — 
restoring the wasted tissues — reanimating the vital 
flame, — and carrying into the most secret recesses 
of Life the sweet influences of health. Such is the 
wondrous alchemy of Chemical Combination in the 
hands of Knowledge and of Power. Thus, whether 
our object be to tear asunder or to put together — 
whether it be analysis or synthesis — the mysterious 
forces and laws of Chemical Affinity give us the 
method and the means of attaining a wide range 
of appropriate purposes and intentions : and exactly 
in proportion to our knowledge of those Affinities, 
and of the conditions under which they can be 
brought to bear upon each other, by artificial com- 
binations on the one hand and by artificial dissolu- 
tions on the other, we attain to higher and higher 
degrees of command over the most complex and 
the most powerful agencies in Nature. 

Now it is precisely in this aspect of the mani- 
pulation of Chemical Affinity, or of the artificial uses 
to which it is put, that the System of Nature de- 
mands for the explanation of its phenomena the 
largest element of Anthropopsychism. It is quite 
true, indeed, that in this, as in every other de- 
partment of Physical Causation, there are a thou- 



Chemical Action Zero if Uncontrolled. 225 

sand cases in which Chemical Affinity is seen 
acting under no obvious control — acting by itself 
and of itself — or, as it were, by accident. And 
these cases are in the highest degree instructive : 
because they carry us on from the proposition that 
Chemical Force is a wonderful instrument of Pur- 
pose, to the farther proposition that when it is not 
under the control of Purpose — when it is not 
manipulated and managed — it would lead to no- 
thing but universal inertia, and universal deadness. 
Chemical Affinity when left to itself would lead to 
saturation — to stable combinations — and these are 
incompatible with movement and with Life. In a 
former chapter I have alluded to an example which 
illustrates this distinction well. When oxygen 
combines chemically with metallic iron and forms 
the red dust with which we are all familiar, there is 
no suggestion of artifice or of structure. What is 
really artificial is not the combination, but the sepa- 
ration between oxygen and iron, because pure metallic 
iron, uncombined with oxygen, is one of the rarest of 
all substances in Nature, and its very existence now 
as a common material in the world is due entirely 
to the artificial handling of Chemical Affinities by 
the ingenuity of Man. When left to itself in the 
presence of oxygen as that element exists in a 
damp atmosphere, it speedily returns to what may 

be called its natural condition, which is that of 

p 



« 



226 



The Unity of Nature. 



chemical combination with oxygen in the form of 
rust. So also when iron is left to its natural affini- 
ties in the bowels of the Earth, and when under 
heat it comes in contact with another very common 
element there, namely, sulphur, it enters into that 
combination which is so well known as pyrites or 
sulphuret of iron. 

This is one of the innumerable cases of chemical 
combination which, when each of them is taken 
singly, and considered by itself, seems to be pur- 
poseless and purely accidental. It exhibits, indeed, 
the peculiar facts of Chemical Affinity in all their 
mystery, because we have no knowledge of the 
causes which determine the mutual attractiveness 
of oxygen and iron, nor of the real nature of 
the coalescence, nor of the causes which give to 
the combination of these two elements physical 
properties which are totally different from those 
which either of them possesses when alone. But 
there is no appearance of these two elements being 
brought together as it were artificially, so as to 
produce the particular substance which we know 
as the red rust of iron. As the world is constituted 
it is inevitable that they should come together. 
Oxygen is present in large quantities in every place 
to which either water or atmospheric air can pene- 
trate, and it is hardly less ubiquitous as an element 
in other combinations, even when both air and 



Inorganic Combinations Seemingly Accidental. 227 



water may be totally excluded. Iron is the most 
widely distributed of all the older known metals. 
Mind, therefore, has no obvious share in such 
chemical combinations as the rust of iron. The 
same thing may be said, probably, of all the other 
chemical combinations which exist in that Province 
of Nature which is called the Inorganic. All the 
rocks and minerals, all the gases and the vapours 
of which the Earth is composed, are mixtures or 
combinations of about some 63 elementary sub- 
stances, according to the Chemical Affinities which 
prevail between them under various conditions of 
dryness, or of solution, of dispersion, or of condensa- 
tion, or of heat and pressure. The most precious 
and the most beautiful resulting compounds, the 
ores of metals, the porphyries, and the granites, and 
the tinted marbles, the crystals, and the gems — the 
getting and the showing of which have in all ages 
been one of the pursuits and one of the pleasures of 
Mankind, — have all been apparently produced by 
accident amidst the throes and pressures of gravita- 
tion, the fires of combustion, and the eruptions of 
volcanic force. They are found where these 
agencies have happened to place them and to form 
them, — sometimes ready for human use, at other 
times requiring the most laborious exertion to mine 
them, and to reduce them to the forms in which they 
can be made available. Each individual case of 



228 



The Unity of Nature, 



chemical combination in all its immense variety of 
products, may seem to be a fortuitous concourse of 
Atoms brought about by the interaction and play of 
Forces blind in themselves, and blindly acting under 
no special or visible direction towards an intelligible 
end. 

In this respect each bit of the Inorganic world 
may be like each bit of some great picture. A little 
pigment adhering to a patch of canvas may be all 
that could be seen in the one case. Some common 
elements naturally uniting may be all that is visible 
in the other. But both these aspects of the facts 
would be alike delusive. It is only when we stand 
back from a picture at a sufficient distance to take 
in the whole, that the separate patches of adhesive 
paint take their place as component parts in one 
general effect. In losing their significance as sub- 
stance or material, they acquire a new significance 
as Art or Work. So it is in Nature, when we 
stand back from details and take a general view of 
the Chemistry even of the Inorganic world. There 
are a thousand things in that Chemistry which when 
looked at by themselves seem to be the merest 
accident ; and yet when we do stand back from them 
and look at them in their proper place, we see that 
they fit in with other things of a different order, 
in endless connections of harmonious coincidence. 
They are accidents as we call them, but they are 



The Seemingly Accidental Really Systematic. 229 



accidents, perhaps, without which we can see that the 
conditions of human life would have been different, 
less happy, less convenient, — without which Man's 
art could never have been what it is, — without 
which he could never have built such houses or 
such ships, or constructed such machines as are 
now the indispensable instruments of his command 
over the resources of Nature. 

And even more than this may be said of some of 
those curious chemical facts of the Inorganic world 
which, in themselves, may seem most fortuitous. 
The air we breathe and the water which we drink 
are, the one a mechanical mixture, and the other 
a chemical combination, on the specific properties 
of which all Life, as it is constituted on Earth, 
depends. We have no clue to the. process by 
which our atmosphere has been made up of gases 
which are not in chemical combination, but are 
only diffused or mechanically mixed, whilst yet, 
like a chemical combination, the mixture is one of 
exact and definite proportions. It does not seem 
as if this process could be purely physical — that is 
to say, the mechanical result of the Physical Forces 
acting by themselves. There is no known law, in 
this sense, by which such a result could have acci- 
dentally come about. But we have a clue, and 
a very clear one, to the " reason why " this arrange- 
ment should be as it is. Oxygen, when alone, has 



230 The Unity of Nature. 

such fierce and unsatisfied affinities with other sub- 
stances that if this gas were pure or undiluted no 
Organic structure could stand against it. And so, 
in atmospheric air it is toned down and softened, 
as it were, by a large admixture and diffusion of 
another gas, nitrogen, which is comparatively inert, 
and then to both are added in much smaller pro- 
portion another element, carbon, which is the food 
of Plants, and an indispensable ingredient in all 
Organic structures. Nor is it less clear why this 
mixture should be established in fixed proportions. 
Any variation in these would throw into confusion 
all the laws affecting the growth and respiration of 
the whole animal and vegetable world. Whether 
we regard these structures as adapted to the atmos- 
phere or the atmosphere as adapted to them, there 
can be no question of the relations of Unity which 
prevail between them, nor can there be any question 
that these adaptive relations are not the work of 
chance. 

Again, in the composition and in the properties 
of water we have a still more striking example both 
of the obscure nature and of the wonderful results 
of Chemical Affinity, as well as of the powerful 
instrumentality which it affords to Knowledge and 
to Power. That water, with its many special and 
peculiar properties, which make it the great natural 
antagonist of fire, should consist of nothing but two- 



Water a Combination of Art. 231 



gases, one of which is the most inflammable of all 
substances, and the other of which is the great 
cause and agent in all combustion, — this is, indeed, 
a fact which may well give us a high estimate of 
the mystery involved in the transforming power of 
Chemical Combination. And in the width and sweep 
of that transforming power we see the indefinite 
room which is afforded by it to special arrangement 
and manipulation. 

In the working and management of this great 
fount and source of Energy, then, Nature is in- 
tensely anthropopsychic. That is to say, it is full 
to overflowing of combinations which have all the 
characters of manufacture and of Art. Water, with- 
out which our Earth would be a desert, and our own 
bodies would be dust, is an article which can be 
manufactured in the Laboratory even more purely 
than it is manufactured in Nature ; but it can only 
be manufactured by first isolating the two consti- 
tuent gases, and then by bringing them together 
under the conditions in which alone , they can 
combine to form the new and totally dissimilar 
substance whose various and complicated pro- 
perties make it one of the prime necessities of 
Life. 

It is a favourite item in the belief of many 
Evolutionists that in the Ocean all Life began. 
And it is undoubtedly true that even now, when 



* 



232 The Unity of Nature. 

the evolution of Organic Life has run a long course, 
the Ocean is far more rich in animal Life than the 
solid Earth. There is no zone or region of the 
Sea which does not swarm with Life. Its very 
substance is often, as we know, luminous with 
creatures whose numbers must exceed all our 
standards of numerical comparison. Not all the 
grains of sand on all the shores and on all the 
deserts of the Globe — not all the visible stars 
of heaven can approach their multitude. The 
very stones which the Sea covers for only a 
portion of the day are encrusted with innumer- 
able hosts, whilst all the fronds of its vegetation 
and every square inch of its various deposits 
are full of legions of living things. Nor are the 
creatures which swarm in the Ocean creatures 
only of a low type of Organisation. They be- 
long to every Order and to every Class from the 
lowest to the highest. Living together in close 
communion, sometimes as each others' guests and 
hosts, we have in the Sea living things with no- 
visible structure, but with the wonderful power of 
separating from the water the almost infinitesimal 
percentage of lime and of silex which it holds 
in solution, and of building them up into exquisite 
forms of beauty : other living things with a high 
and very obvious structure, which have the same 
power of building homes and houses for themselves 



The Sea and its Fulness of Life, 233 



of another kind : others again whose own external 
skeleton is more complicated than the finest jointed 
armour of the Middle Ages, and whose plates and 
scales are yet so arranged that each can grow round 
its own margin, and retain its relative place in the 
enlargement of the whole : others yet again in 
whose close articulations this operation is impos- 
sible, and which therefore have been given the 
power of extricating their own body from its coat 
and panoply of mail, and of reproducing the whole 
every year from the surrounding waters. Then, 
again, on all these creatures, more or less, there 
are others in innumerable multitudes which grow 
like plants and which bud like flowers ; whilst 
around and overhead we have the earliest members 
of the Vertebrata in immense variety, — together 
with gigantic representatives of the Class, Mam- 
malia, concealed under the outward form of fishes 
— some of them having brains nearest in propor- 
tionable size to the brain of Man. Nor are there 
wanting creatures which seem links and passages 
from marine to terrestrial life — the Dugongs, the 
Manatees and Seals, which are more or less amphi- 
bious, and some of which have limbs seemingly on 
the way from fins to legs. It is not wonderful, 
therefore, that the Sea should be regarded as the 
mother of all flesh. Water, in itself, constitutes a 
■very large proportion of the substance of all 



234 



The Unity of Nature. 



Organisms, and the life of most creatures living in 
the Sea entirely depends on the capacity of water to 
hold in solution a certain adequate amount of free 
oxygen wholly separate from that proportion of the 
same gas which enters into its own chemical composi- 
tion. The gills of fishes and the various breathing 
apparatus of other marine Organisms have no power 
to decompose water — that is to say, to separate 
the oxygen from its chemical union with hydrogen. 
They can only appropriate the free or uncombined 
oxygen, which is dissolved or held as a mechanical 
mixture in the water. All marine life, therefore, 
depends on this property of water — that besides or 
over and above the amount of oxygen which enters 
into its own composition, it has power also to hold 
in solution another proportion of the same gas in 
a condition which leaves it free to enter into a 
separate combination with the circulating fluids of 
living creatures. 

H'ere we have a cycle of adapted relations be- 
tween the Organic and the Inorganic which is only 
one of many. Again, these relations cannot be 
accidental, and we see that the "firmament of 
waters," which covers by far the largest portion of 
our Globe's surface, has a constitution and properties 
which must have been determined before Life 
began, but which, nevertheless, had anticipatory 
relations to that Life which was to be. And yet 



Inorganic World Pre- adapted to Organic. 235 



those relations are not the simple relations of 
physical cause and of effect, for water does not 
of itself generate Life, nor can it hold Life in 
solution as it can hold the salts of iodine and of 
potassium. The Intelligibility of Nature demands 
that we should recognise in these relations the 
work of Chemical Affinity in the Inorganic Pro- 
vince, working under conditions analogous to those 
under which we can ourselves work it, when we 
know and use the methods which it affords to our 
own Intelligence. 

Nothing, indeed, can be more instructive than 
those methods, or the principles which they involve. 
For just as in mechanics the storage and the con- 
trol and the distribution of Force by human device, 
show that the most absolute and rigid laws are the 
best servants of Contrivance, so in chemical science 
the same great principle receives a yet more signal 
illustration. It was the Chemistry of Nature which 
long concealed from Man not a few of the most 
valuable materials of his industry, and it was only 
when he discovered how richly that Chemistry lends 
itself to his own management and control that he 
came into possession of them. One principal part 
of the history of Civilisation is the history of the 
chemistry of the metals. There is a deep signifi- 
cance in that classification of the stages of human 
progress which has been founded on the successive 



236 



The Unity of Nature. 



use of Implements of stone and of bronze and of 
iron. So completely do the laws of Chemical 
Affinity when uncontrolled cover up and conceal 
the metals, that even now for the most part we 
forget how many, how various, and how curious 
they are. Our common impression would be that 
of the various substances in Nature a small minority 
are metallic. Whereas, on the contrary, the fact is 
that of the sixty-three elementary substances into 
which, according to our present knowledge, all 
material combinations can be reduced by chemical 
analysis, the great majority — some forty-eight — are 
metals. The progress of chemical science is dis- 
covering for some of these metals refined uses and 
applications which are already numerous, and which 
may become more numerous from age to age. But 
in respect to the greater proportion of these metallic 
elements, the utility of them lies in the natural com- 
binations in which they are actually found. Potas- 
sium is of little or no use except in the form of Potash. 
Sodium is of little or no use except in the form of 
Soda, or of the chloride of Soda, which is common 
Salt. And so in a great majority of cases the metals 
are valuable only in the combinations which they 
form with substances which are non-metallic. 

Of all the metals, there is only one which in 
Nature is generally found in the metallic state, 
either pure or with such slight alloy as not to 



Chemistry and the Metals. 



237 



detract from its lustre and its beauty. That metal 
is o-old. But although on this account it was 
probably the very earliest of all the metals to 
attract the attention of Mankind, and although on 
the same account it has been taken from the earliest 
ages as the chief standard of value, and is pre- 
eminently called the " precious metal," it is in 
respect to everything except ornament the least 
useful metal existing in the world. As regards the 
other metals, it is Chemistry alone which explains 
the order of precedence in which they have been 
discovered and applied to use. It is Chemistry 
alone which explains how it came to pass that the 
most useful of all metals, iron, is at once the com- 
monest, the most widely distributed, found in the 
greatest masses, and yet was the last to be known 
and to be separated from the other elements with 
which it is ordinarily combined. The explanation 
is very simple. The commonest ores of iron are 
those in which the metal is combined with oxygen 
or with carbonic acid. In both these cases the 
combination has no metallic appearance, and the in- 
valuable properties of the metal are neutralised and 
concealed. On the other hand, the principal metal 
which came earlier into use, copper, is, though much 
less common than iron, more usually combined with, 
sulphur, and in this form the metallic lustre and 
appearance is rather enhanced than injured. There 



The U?iity of Nature. 



are no more beautiful ores than the sulphurets of 
copper ; none more calculated to attract the notice 
of primeval Man. It is true that iron is also very 
commonly combined with sulphur, and that the sul- 
phurets of iron are as obviously metallic as those 
of copper; but it is equally true that the affinity 
between iron and sulphur is so vehement that it is 
most difficult to separate them completely ; and that 
the smallest percentage of sulphur is destructive of 
the most useful properties of iron. Hence it came 
that a metallurgical operation which may seem to 
imply very advanced knowledge, namely, the for- 
mation of an alloy between copper and tin, and the 
application of this alloy to the manufacture of imple- 
ments, was an operation which apparently in all 
countries long preceded the much more simple and 
the much more effective operations which suffice 
for the production of iron and steel. 

All these operations are in their nature chemical, 
and each one of them illustrates how Chemical 
Affinity is the most supple and subtle of all tools 
in the hands of Knowledge and of Purpose. One 
fundamental principle lies at the root of all, and that 
is that the elements which are to be broken up from 
some existing combination, must be presented to 
other elements in the order of new affinities, and 
under such conditions, first of contact and then of 
heat or of solution, that these affinities have the 



Chemical Combination Subject to Intelligence. 239 



freest opportunities to act. Thus if we wish to 
separate iron from the oxygen or the carbonic acid 
with which it is combined in Nature, we have only 
to melt it in contact with some other element which 
has a still greater affinity than itself for these sub- 
stances. Under this discipline of arrangement they 
can be made to leave the metal, and combine in 
preference with other bodies. 

Now, arrangements of this kind are exclusively 
the work of Mind, and it is in the conceiving of 
them, and in the effecting of them, that its supre- 
macy consists. The selection of the elements which 
are to be placed in contact, and the preparation of 
the chemical or physical conditions under which that 
contact is to be effected, — these are the essential 
operations which must be conducted under the 
guidance of knowledge, and with a view to the 
attainment of a specific purpose. For the attain- 
ment of any purpose Man must use the laws of. 
Nature as he finds them, and those laws, as regards 
Chemistry, demand that he should know the facts, 
and know how to use the facts, respecting the 
selective affinities of one element for another. In 
order to separate, he must know how to join ; and 
conversely, in order to join, he must know how to 
separate. For the fundamental principle of all 
such operations is, that very often the separation 



240 



The Unity of Nature. 



of one element can only be effected by contriving 
for it some new combination with others, Sub- 
stitution is the key to all the higher products of 
Chemical Analysis, and to all the higher methods of 
Chemical Synthesis alike. Many of the results thus 
attained are highly artificial, that is to say, that 
although they are the product of natural affinities, 
these affinities are brought to act under conditions 
that could never occur without management and 
contrivance. Thus, to take a particular example, 
the metal potassium has such affinity for oxygen, 
that it cannot be reduced to the metallic state nor 
kept in it, except by very elaborate operations and 
precautions. If this metal be exposed to the air, it 
rapidly attracts the oxygen ; and if it be thrown into 
water, the combination is so violent in its energy, 
that the strange spectacle is exhibited of water 
bursting into fierce combustion. This is a very 
simple case, — the case of an element which under 
purely natural conditions refuses to remain uncom- 
bined. But exactly the same principle applies to the 
converse case of innumerable combinations in which 
the elements under purely natural conditions tend 
to separate and cannot long be held together, 
because they have, as it were, been compelled to 
unite under conditions which are highly artificial. 
These artificial conditions very often can with 
difficulty be maintained, or possibly they cannot 



Physical Causation not Supreme. 



241 



be maintained at all, beyond a certain time. 
This is the case with many compounds in the 
mechanical arts, and especially in the pharmacopoeia, 
— compounds which, being thus highly artificial, are 
consequently liable to decomposition and decay. 
Chemical Affinity, under control, was employed to 
make them ; but Chemical Affinity, escaping from 
control, cannot be hindered from unmaking them, 
again. All such compositions have a character of 
their own. In one sense they are natural, in another 
sense they are not. They have all been made by 
natural laws, but they belong to a System in which 
purely Physical Causation is subordinate and not 
supreme. In them the laws of Chemical Affinity 
have not indeed been violated, but they have been 
manipulated. They have been made to do work 
which they never could or would do except under 
the discipline of Mind, and for the accomplishment 
of its aims. 



CHAPTER VII. 

The Elementary Constitution of Matter in 
Relation to the Organic. 

T N the last chapter we have seen the artificial 
character and aspect of the comparatively few 
chemical combinations which Man can effect in the 
Inorganic Kingdom of Nature, and we have seen 
too that in that part of the System of Nature 
there are some mixtures and some combinations of 
primary magnitude and importance which seem to 
be equally artificial. But there is another great 
Division of Nature in which Man cannot work at 
all, and yet the whole of which is occupied by com- 
binations on which the same stamp and character 
are still more visibly impressed. This is the King- 
dom of the Organic. In this Kingdom all the 
chemical combinations which are employed are in 
the highest degree artificial, complicated, and what 
chemists call " unstable." Here Chemical Affinity is 
seen working under, as it were, a double servitude. 



The Phrase " Organic Chemistry." 243 



It is called upon to make up certain special combina- 
tions of material, in order that these may again be 
worked up into special structures under the power 
of that other and • higher kind of Energy which 
we know as Life. In this series of operations, 
•Chemical Affinity may well be called by the title 
which is the traditional title of the Popes of Rome. 
It is the "Servus Servorum Dei." 

Here, again, in order to see clearly wherein the 
Unity of Nature is to be really found, we must 
observe distinctions which the lan^ua^e of science 
is in danger of confounding. We talk of " Organic 
Chemistry/' and the phrase may have a legiti- 
mate meaning, if it be properly understood. But 
there is a treacherous and perilous ambiguity in it. 
It is curious to trace the loose and deceptive 
passages of meaning by which phrases of this kind 
are made to introduce and perpetuate the grossest 
fallacies. Organic Chemistry means the chemistry 
of Organs. But the chemistry of Organs may mean 
•either of two very different things. It may mean 
the chemistry which makes Organs, or it may 
mean the chemistry which Organs make. Now, in 
the first of these two meanings it is nonsense. 
There is no mere chemistry which can make an 
Organ. There is no laboratory which can turn out, 
or build up, even the lowest living Cell. But in the 
second of these two senses, the phrase Organic 



244 



The Unity of Nature. 



Chemistry has an important meaning. Life, as the 
Energy of living Organs, has undoubtedly a chemis- 
try of its own ; that is to say, it makes up com- 
pounds which no other agency can make. 

But before examining further what Organic Che- 
mistry is, in the only sense in which it corresponds 
to the realities of Nature, let us examine a little more 
carefully the other meaning in which it corresponds 
with no reality at all. For let it be clearly under- 
stood that mere Chemical Affinity, so far as we know, 
cannot produce any " Organism," however simple 
or however low. It can only produce the material 
substances out of which, by a separate process, 
Organisms are formed. Chemical Affinity, again, 
when an Organism has been formed, can and does 
produce, under the special kind of energy to which 
that structure is due, and which is indwelling 
there, new combinations which are sometimes called 
"organic," not because they have Organic Structure 
or anything approaching to it, but because living 
Organisms alone can make them. But, in the proper 
sense of the word, it is obvious that nothing ought 
to be called organic which has not itself an organic 
structure. Now Chemical Affinity, so far as we 
know, can give rise to no structure beyond the struc- 
ture of the lifeless Molecule. What that elementary 
kind of structure is we have no knowledge until we 
know the ultimate nature of Chemical Combination. 



Organic Chemistry as Defined. 245 



But we know that it is not a structure at all in the 
same sense in which an Organism is a structure. 
The simplest living "Cell," whether of vegetable or 
of animal Life, is a structure of a kind such as no 
mere chemistry can produce. On the other hand, 
the substance of which that Cell is made is a chemi- 
cal compound, and generally a chemical compound 
of the most complicated nature. Moreover, the 
Cell is again capable of calling upon chemical affini- 
ties to provide for it new material, on the one 
hand, and to take away from it, on the other hand, 
certain old material in the form of degenerate com- 
binations which are waste. Properly speaking, there- 
fore, there is no chemistry except the chemistry of the 
Inorganic, although the unorganised or elementary, 
lifeless, and comparatively structureless compounds 
which" chemistry is alone competent to produce, are 
the necessary materials of all living structures. 
Accordingly, when chemists are compelled to define 
more accurately what they mean by Organic Che- 
mistry, they are obliged to confess that all they 
mean is the chemistry of the " Proteids," or of the 
" Hydro-Carbons." That is to say, it is the che- 
mistry which produces a definite series of com- 
pounds (chiefly of Hydrogen and Carbon), which 
Life in living Organs is alone competent to produce. 
In this sense, but in this sense alone, Organic Che- 
mistry is separate from other chemistry — that is to 



246 



The Unity of Nature. 



say, it represents a separate group of compounds — » 
just as the chemistry of the "Aniline Dyes" is sepa- 
rate from the chemistry of the " Alkaline Metals," 
or the chemistry of the " Cyanogen Compounds " is 
separate from both. 

Hence we see the futility of the controversy 
which has been so keen upon the question whether 
the Chemistry of Life is or is not the same as the 
Chemistry of the Inorganic. In one sense it is the 
same, in another sense it is different. It is the 
same in so far as the elementary substances con- 
tained in living bodies, and in the products of 
living bodies, are elements identical with those 
which exist in lifeless things. It is different in 
so far as these elements are worked up into 
combinations which are effected by no other 
agent than Vitality, and exist in no other depart- 
ment of Nature except that of living things. 
One of the great peculiarities connected with 
them is the very small number of the elements 
concerned, and the extreme and subtle complexity 
of the combinations which these elements are made 
to assume. So great is that complexity, that it 
escapes all the ordinary formula of chemical nota- 
tion, and some writers now even contend that it 
casts serious doubt on at least some parts of the 
Atomic Hypothesis, which is the best explanation 
of almost all other chemical combinations. On 



Organic Compounds "Built Up" 247 



the other hand, there is no reason to believe 
that in the compounds which are called Organic 
the ultimate laws of Chemical Affinity are altered 
or suspended. The impression which these so- 
called organic compounds give to chemists is that 
they are effected on the same fundamental principle 
on which all other combinations are effected, and 
that is the principle of the ultimate elements being 
so brought together that they are compelled into 
arrangements amongst each other, and substitutions 
for each other, into which they never are compelled 
except under the energies of Life. The phrase which 
chemists always adopt, and are obliged to adopt, 
in order to convey to others the image or impres- 
sion which these compounds leave upon the mind 
is this, — that they are " built up." 

Here then, again, as in so many other depart- 
ments of science, we find that the anthropopsychic 
or teleological interpretation of Nature is the insepar- 
able and insuperable result. Nor is it less curious 
to observe how even the apparent exceptions, which 
are seized upon and dwelt upon as proving that 
Life has no special chemistry of its own, are excep- 
tions which, when cross-examined, give evidence 
against their Counsel. We are told sometimes in 
great triumph that certain products which are called 
Organic can now be made by human artifice in the 
Laboratory. But two questions have to be asked 



248 



The Unity of Nature. 



concerning this boast, and in both of them the 
answer dispels the argument. The first question is, 
What are the combinations which can be thus 
made ? and the second question is, How is the 
making of them effected ? 

The answer to the first of these questions is, 
that no fragment of Matter which can strictly be 
called Organic — that is to say, no fragment of Matter 
having Organic Structure — has ever been made in 
any laboratory by the hands of Man. What he has 
succeeded in making has been some one or two of the 
unorganised compounds which living Organs make, 
or rather which are among the products of their 
decomposition and decay. Urea, one of the waste 
products of the animal Organism, is the principal 
triumph of what is ambitiously called the " Organic 
Chemistry " of the Laboratory. There is a hope and 
a promise, indeed, of greater triumphs of imitative 
skill. Some progress seems to have been made in 
" building up " in the Laboratory some of the valu- 
able "Alkaloids" which enter into the composition 
of certain vegetables. But none of these successes of 
chemical manipulation, even if they were multiplied 
a hundredfold, bring us one step nearer to the 
manufacture of anything which really belongs to the 
Kingdom of the Organic. We might as well boast 
of making an " Organic " compound when we have 
made, as it is easy to do, sulphuretted hydrogen 



Organic Products got only by " Building Up? 249 



or ammonia. These, too, are among the combina- 
tions which are Organic in the sense of being given 
off by Organisms either in action or in decay. 

But the answer to the second question is even 
more important than this answer to the first. How 
has Man succeeded in manufacturing the so-called 
Organic compound of urea ? The answer is, by 
u building up." By careful analysis he has first 
ascertained the elements of which it is composed, 
and again by a highly artificial and elaborate mani- 
pulation of those elements he has got them to 
•combine in the required proportions. Is not this 
an analogy which strengthens the conclusion which 
it was intended to refute ? For just as Chemical 
Affinity has been made the servant of a little know- 
ledge and a little skill in the manufacture of urea, 
so to all appearance has it been made the servant 
of knowledge and of skill which by comparison 
is infinite, in the " building up" of those subtle, 
delicate, " unstable," almost evanescent compounds 
which are the requisite materials of living Organs. 

And here I must return to the great distinction 
which has already been referred to, but which can- 
not be too constantly kept in mind. Chemical Com- 
position is one thing — Organic Structure is quite 
another thing. And if " building up " is the anthro- 
popsychic metaphor which chemists are compelled 
to adopt when they wish to express the process 



250 The Unity of Nature. 



by which the mere substance or material of living 
Organs has been prepared, with how much greater 
force must this analogy be applied to the farther 
and wholly different process by which the compo- 
site material has been farther " built up " and woven 
into Organic Structures ? In the Inorganic world, 
indeed, there are many arrangements of material 
which are so regular and formal that they, in a cer- 
tain sense, may be called structural ; and these 
arrangements are effected by a kind of energy 
which, if not purely chemical, is in such close 
alliance with it that there is certainly some very 
near connection. Such is the structure or the 
forms of crystals — definite shapes which many sub* 
stances assume when passing from the liquid or 
from the gaseous state into the condition of solidity. 
But the structure of a crystal is due to nothing but 
the simple or mechanical aggregation of its mole- 
cules along definite lines of force. There is no 
internal structure in a crystal different from the 
exterior. A cubical crystal is made up of an inde- 
finite number of little cubes. An octohedral crystal 
is made up of an indefinite number of little octo- 
hedrons. Through and through the whole mass 
there is a perfect uniformity in the method of 
molecular aggregation. It is a mere mass of mole- 
cules compacted together in a particular shape. It 
is a mere congeries of identical units marshalled 



Inadequacy of Mechanical Explanations. 251 



and drilled into coherence in a certain form and 
order. 

In all this there is an immeasurable distance and 
difference between the Organic and the Inorganic. 
It is only by inventing forms of speech which 
suppress this difference that the phraseology of 
pure Materialism can be applied with even a sem- 
blance of sufficiency to the ^Structures which are at 
once the work and the abode of Life. " Molecular 
arrangement " is one of those phrases which have 
been thus invented, as expressing the fundamental 
principle on which all differences consist in material 
structures, whether dead or living. I do not think 
that this phrase is adequate to express or to afford 
any explanation of the differences which prevail 
even in the sphere of the Inorganic. There is 
something in the nature and effects even of mere 
chemical combination which cannot be conveyed in 
the terms of any purely mechanical conception. Yet 
on this subject the common phraseology of scientific 
men has hardly advanced at all since the days of 
Lucretius. The Ancients had an idea that the 
Atoms of matter were held together by means of 
" hooks " mutually intertwining. And so in our own 
day the most eminent physicists are obliged to 
have recourse to the analogous conception of the 
Atoms in chemical combination being " linked," 
or " interlocked," or "tightly clasped," or "pairedj* 



252 



The Unity of Nature. 



or " grouped " together. This kind of phraseology 
is all very well, provided it be borne in mind how 
dim and how distant the analogy is, and how power- 
less it is to express the facts which Chemistry has 
revealed. The only one of these facts which it 
serves to keep in mind is that the separate Atoms 
are never lost or wholly merged, because they can 
always be recovered again in their original integrity. 
But during the combination we do not know how 
they are affected. It looks very much as if they 
were absolutely interfused, in such a sense and to 
such an extent as almost to undermine the doctrine 
that " Impenetrability," or the absolute Occupation 
of Space, can be really reckoned among the inherent 
properties of Matter. No image suggestive of 
mere grouping in any form, however intricate, can 
be other than delusive and empty of the truth. 
Chemical Combination is essentially dynamic, and 
not mechanical. Moreover, it is selective, and 
not indiscriminate. No mere method of arrange- 
ment among the particles of Matter can produce 
the changes which Chemical Combination makes. 
We cannot convert a brick house into a marble 
palace by simply relaying the bricks in an altered 
fashion. And yet this would be a transformation 
very simple and very easily conceived when com- 
pared with the transformations which are effected 
by the combinations of Chemical Affinity. Under 



Inorganic Structures Merely Chemical, 253 

the power of it, Atoms which are in themselves 
passive and inert become possessed, when com- 
bined, of the fiercest energies. And vice versa, 
Atoms which when alone are intensely active, pass 
when combined into a passive state, and thus a 
perfect equilibrium may be established among 
Forces which no other agency could control. 

But however great and insoluble may be the 
mystery attaching to the ultimate nature of these 
laws of Chemical Affinity, we can at least read in 
them the same lesson on the relation which they 
bear to the Organic world which we have already 
read in them on the relation which they bear to 
the Inorganic. We can at least see very clearly 
what tools and materials they supply for the 
"building up" of Organic Structures. I have 
spoken of this lesson as it comes home to us in 
the Laboratory, where the advancing knowledge of 
analysis is leading every year to more and more 
elaborate possibilities and results of Synthesis. All 
these results are in the lower Kingdom of the In- 
organic. But in that Kingdom they are veritable 
edifices ; compounds " built up," as the chemists say,, 
by the dexterous use of Chemical Affinities, and by 
the artificial procurement of the conditions under 
which they must enter into some foreseen com- 
bination and produce some desired effect. But the 
most elaborate and ingenious of these combinations 



254 



The Unity of Nature. 



are after all structures only in the same sense in 
which crystals are structures also. They may be 
more or less elaborate — more or less artificial — 
more or less imitative of the combinations which 
are found in Nature, and which give value to one 
or other of her products. Yet whatever structure 
they have is always purely and merely chemical. 
They are mere symmetrical and uniform arrange- 
ments or combinations of Atoms and of Molecules, 
But the structures which are "built up" by Life 
with the help of Chemical Affinity in the Organs 
which are its own home and seat, are structures in 
a very different sense indeed. They are no mere 
aggregates of Atoms or of Molecules, each like the 
other, and all similarly stuck, or " hooked, or linked, 
or grouped " together in identical forms indefinitely 
repeated. Nor are they even mere chemical com- 
binations. In every bit and particle of every liv- 
ing Organism, Difference and not Identity reigns 
supreme, — Difference not necessarily of chemical 
composition, but of physical constitution, — Differ- 
ence not passive but active, — Difference not of sub- 
stance but of function, — Difference not in what the 
Atoms and the Molecules are, but in what they are 
set to do. 

Segregation and not aggregation is the fundamen- 
tal operation of constructive Organic Chemistry. It 
is first the selection and separation of certain Atoms 



Organic Functions Structural throughout. 255 



from pre-existing compounds, and then again the fit- 
ting of these to others which also must be selected 
with a view to qualifying them for definite functions. 
And in every Organism, for the doing of an almost 
infinite variety of things, it is farther necessary that 
out of a very few elements an almost infinite variety 
of structures should be " built up." How infinite 
that variety is can only be appreciated by those 
who have made a study of microscopic sections of 
vegetable and animal tissues. The beauty and 
complexity of these tissues even in Plants is very 
great ; but they are simplicity itself when compared 
with the tissues of the higher animal Organisms. 
Even the very word " tissue," though perhaps the 
best we have, suggests but a feeble image. Every 
animal Organism is Structure through and through. 
Its whole substance, and, as it were, its whole essence, 
is Structure and nothing else. 

The unit of Organic Structure is the Cell, and 
every living Cell is a whole world in itself, with 
indwelling capacities and powers as various as 
the ultimate causes of them are mysterious and 
inscrutable. There is a whole class of animals, 
many of them of exquisite form and beauty, which 
are held to consist entirely of one Cell. In every 
higher Organism the activities of the Cell are 
mysteriously co-operative and subordinate. But 
although the causes are inscrutable, the ends and 



256 



The Unity of Nature. 



objects, — the purposes and functions, — of every 
Organ, which is built up of Cells, can, for the most 
part, be defined and understood. In the first place, 
there is one great end governing the whole, and 
that is the establishment and maintenance, in the 
midst of other things, of a living. Unity — an Indi- 
viduality with a Will of its own, — a Personality — 
which shall be complete in itself, and more or less 
completely separable from all surroundings. Given 
certain physical conditions which we see as a fact 
to be essential to the existence and enjoyment of 
Life, then every particle of every Organism is 
simply part of the required mechanism for the 
meeting of these conditions ; and its only explana- 
tion to us consists in the perception of its relation 
to this purpose. Throughout each and every 
Organic Being the primal combinations, and the 
primal units of living structure, are shaped and 
moulded into forms which, as regards their purely 
physical and organic office and functions, have all 
either a purely chemical or a purely mechanical 
explanation. The preparations, for example, of 
acids and of emulsions for the dissolving of foreign 
substances is a perfectly intelligible preliminary 
and preparation for the processes of digestion. 
The elongation and flattening- and longitudinal 
arrangement of Cells into tubes of many sizes, 
some large, some microscopically small, are, in like 



The " Corptiscles" of the Blood. 257 



manner, perfectly intelligible preparations for the 
conveyance of circulating fluids. The condensation 
and elongation of the same Organic Units into the 
cords and threads and fibres of nerve-tissue, and the 
enclosure of this most highly organised substance 
again within protecting sheaths, are not less intelli- 
gible provisions and adaptations for the conduction 
of these sensory movements in which galvanic 
currents are probably concerned. 

Perhaps no Organic substance, whether we regard 
it in its composition, or in its structure, is a better 
example of complexity than the blood. We speak 
and think of "atoms," even in the Inorganic world, 
as endowed with properties so wonderful and mys- 
terious that some men doubt their existence, and 
others, like Sir J. Herschel and Professor Clerk 
Maxwell, can only regard them as " manufactured 
articles." But in the blood we have an example of 
a fluid, in which one essential element is a multitude 
of bodies so minute that to the Ancients they would 
have perfectly represented all that they could con- 
ceive of Atoms. I refer to those bodies which are 
called the "corpuscles" of the blood, bodies so 
minute that one cubic millimetre of the fluid is 
estimated to contain five millions of them — that 
is to say, that one cubic inch of blood would con- 
tain eighty millions of these corpuscles. Yet each, 
one of these corpuscles is an Apparatus in itself 

R 



2 5 8 



The Unity of Natitre. 



It is not a simple body, but complex and full of 
differences. It is a framework in which are em- 
bedded various compounds, and particularly the 
" Hcemoglobin " to which the whole liquid owes 
its peculiar colour. This substance is among the 
arcana of Life. There is no human priesthood 
privileged to go within its veil. The chemist can 
analyse it indeed, and can tell us of the elements 
of which it is composed. And what he does tell 
us is curious enough. Alone of all the constituents 
of the body this mysterious " Hcemoglobin " contains 
iron. Besides this, it contains the usual three gases 
with a special supply of oxygen, whilst it holds also 
sulphur and carbon in definite proportions. But 
this is not all. The framework of the corpuscles 
in which this precious material is held entangled 
or enclosed, is so complex in its constituents, that 
it may be said to contain a whole laboratory of 
chemical elements. Besides chlorine, phosphorus, 
and sulphur, there are the four metals, potassium, 
sodium, calcium, and magnesium. * And then, in 
addition to all this world of complexity in the red 
corpuscles, there are besides another vast number 
of corpuscles which are uncoloured, in the propor- 
tion of about i to 350 of the red.t These also are 
- — perhaps even more than the red corpuscles — 

* Foster's '« Text-Book of Physiology," p. 29. 

t Gamgee's " Physiological Chemistry," vol. i. p. 124. 



The Circulation of the Blood. 



259 



among the secretest things of Nature, for they are 
not easily distinguishable from the separate Or- 
ganisms which are the lowest forms of individual 
Life. These colourless corpuscles are said to move 
like the Amoeba — a well-known microscopic Or- 
ganism — and they seem to pass through the walls 
of all the vessels as if there was nothing in their 
way. 

The ultimate cause of the necessity for all these 
things is beyond us. That is to say, we do not 
know why Life could not exist and flourish without 
a physical machinery so highly complex. But given 
the necessity of the circulating fluids of the body 
being placed in contact with the oxygen of the 
atmosphere, then this necessity explains the pre- 
paration of some " Organ," — that is to say, of some 
special Apparatus, — in which these fluids may have 
the requisite exposure to atmospheric air, and may, 
nevertheless, be kept from spilling. This, again, 
requires that the walls of the vessels should have a 
certain physical constitution and structure, through 
which certain elements can pass freely, whilst at 
the same time the liquids are prevented from escap- 
ing. Among all the wonders of Nature, there is 
perhaps no wonder greater than the Circulation of 
the Blood. Its physical, its mechanical, its chemical, 
and its vital phenomena are all equally complicated, 
and are all intimately interwoven. The current or 



260 The Unity of N ahtre, 

the blood is like some great river, now running in 
one wide channel, now dividing into a thousand 
rills, but everywhere bearing in its stream vast 
multitudes of little rafts more numerous than all 
the ships and boats and navies of the world, each 
laden with a precious cargo, and each yielding up 
that cargo as well as its own materials to repair and 
reanimate the tissues which are suffering loss or 
exhaustion from the work and the waste of Life. Still 
more purely mechanical are the necessities and the 
methods which explain the bony structure of the 
animal body, which, whether in the position of an ex- 
ternal or of an internal skeleton, is an essential part 
of the Apparatus belonging to all the higher forms 
of Life. The physical necessity is clear. Every 
muscular movement must have its fulcrum, and the 
demands of gravitation require that soft substances 
of considerable weight should have some rigid sup- 
port to save them from collapse. 

These are but a few examples of the one great 
principle on which all Physiology depends. They 
are examples which give us some idea of the im- 
measurable distance that lies between the Organic 
and the Inorganic. It has been said by a very 
eminent man that " the process of development of 
the egg, like that of the seed, is neither more nor 
less mysterious than that in virtue of which the 
molecules of water, when it is cooled down to the 



Organisation and Crystallisation Separate. 261 

freezing point, build themselves up into regular 
crystals." # It may be quite true, indeed, that the 
crystalline arrangement of Matter is in itself mys- 
terious, because we do not know the ultimate source 
or nature of those " lines of force " along which the 
particles of Matter are compelled to range them- 
selves into definite forms. But if it be possible to 
have any degrees in the scale of ignorance or of 
mystery, where all is profoundly dark, there is really 
no sort of comparison between the mystery which 
attaches to the processes of Crystallisation and the 
processes of Organic Structure. As mere processes 
they are really incommensurable. There is a fun- 
damental difference between all forms of mere 
orderly aggregation and even the very lowest form 
of living structure. 

In one aspect, indeed, it may be said with truth 
that there is . less mystery in the Organic than in 
the Inorganic Kingdom, because the processes of 
Organic growth, however mysterious and indeed 
inconceivable they may be as processes merely, are 
at least illuminated by the clearest light in their 
relation to fitness and utility. But in crystalline 
forms there is no obvious utility. I do not know 
that we should necessarily lose anything of essential 
value to human life if all substances were as amor- 
phous as many of them actually are. But at least in 

* " Science Primers — Introductory/' by Professor Huxley, p. 92. 



262 



The Unity of Nature. 



all Organic Structures the light of adaptation shines 
like the Sun in Heaven. In this lies the pre-eminent 
interest attaching to Biology. It is a branch of 
science which, in proportion as it concerns the 
highest department of Nature, becomes more and 
more anthropopsychic, because above all others it 
essentially consists in the mental recognition o£ 
structural developments which advance along lines 
of adaptive purpose. For in the course of this 
development, it is above all things remarkable, that 
always in the earliest stages every step in growth 
must go before the use which it is to serve when 
finished. No Organ can be used until it is fit for * 
use, and the gradual adaptation to that use, through 
innumerable stages of growth and of development, 
is an adaptation which is always anticipatory and 
prophetic. As regards each individual Organism in 
its progress from the Ovum to maturity this is an 
universal and an unquestionable fact, which proves 
that the serviceableness of Organic Structures for 
particular functions must, under any theory, whether 
it is called Evolution, or whether it is called Crea- 
tion, have existed in preparation before it can have 
existed in fact. 

It has often occurred to me that this same order 
and succession of events may be the real explana- 
tion, in some cases at least, of the strange and 
mysterious phenomena of rudimentary Organs, sepa- 



The Foresights of Nature. 



263, 



rated from all actual use, or possibility of use, in 
certain animals. On the theory of Evolution every 
existing creature must have existed potentially in 
the earliest Germs. That is to say, those Germs 
must have had an innate tendency to development 
along certain lines of structure. Nothing therefore 
is more natural than that Structure should some- 
times run forward, as it were, upon those lines, and; 
should become visible quite apart from the actual 
occurrence of conditions calling for its use. If, for 
example, the earliest mammalian Germ had "poten- 
tially " in it all the latest developments of the Class, 
it is quite intelligible that some portions of the 
perfect structure should be traceable in creatures 
which are never destined to have them completed, 
or to need their services. Indeed the general 
principle which is involved in this idea is recog- 
nised in a well-established doctrine of Comparative 
Anatomy — namely this, — that all Organic growths 
which are highly specialised and apparently sepa- 
rated from others, are in reality nothing but exag- 
gerated developments of some bit or rudiment of 
structure which exists throughout the whole Class 
to which it may belong in Nature. In these bits of 
structure the future development may be said to have 
pre-existed. Without these roots the growth could 
not have been. In them therefore the Previsions 
of Nature are, as it were, embodied. In them we 



264 



The Unity of Nature. 



have a physical basis for the conception, apparently 
ideal and almost transcendental, of the Potential 
existence of all creatures in the earliest germs. 

A striking illustration of this idea and of its 
corresponding doctrine in Comparative Anatomy, is 
to be found in Professor Flower's most interesting 
lecture on the Origin of Whales.* Probably there 
is no growth in Nature which seems more abso- 
lutely unique, and separate from all others, than the 
Baleen or Whalebone apparatus which fills the mouth 
of certain genera of Whales, and constitutes the 
only Organ by which they can seize and detain the 
myriads of minute creatures which form their food. 
Yet Professor Flower has clearly identified its origin 
-as only a modification of a bit of structure which 
exists in almost all mammals, — the roots of it, as it 
were, being in certain ridges and papillae of the Palate, 
— these being specially visible in that most singular 
creature the Giraffe. It is at least possible that 
this also may be the explanation of these other bits 
of structure which have been supposed to be aborted 
by disuse. In the metamorphoses of Insects, certain 
Organs of the perfect Insect, or 11 Imago," are some- 
times visible as rudiments in the imperfect or larval 
form, although in that form these rudiments have 
no use or function. In these cases, all such rudi- 
ments have their interpretation not in the past, but 

* " Nature," No. 713. Vol. 28. " 



Principle of Development. 



265 



in the future. They are fashioned and prepared 
not by use, but for it. And indeed this principle is 
declared by a high authority to be the principle 
which governs the whole process of Development 
as it is exhibited in the wonderful transformations 
through which Insects go. Sir J. Lubbock tells 
us * that whilst these transformations as a whole are 
in a sense the same in all cases, they differ widely 
in the rapidity with which different Organs are 
developed in different Insects ; and he adds that 
the condition of those Organs at the time of birth, 
or hatching of the egg, depends mainly on the 
manner of life which the larva is " intended to lead." 
Those Organs are well developed which are requisite 
for immediate use in the larval state, whilst those 
other Organs which are destined for a future stage 
are present only in rudiments or in germ. We may 
be quite sure that the same principle has governed 
the development of the whole animal creation, and 
if so, we may be equally sure that rudimentary 
Organs are to be expected everywhere in Nature, 
and are everywhere open to the same interpretation. 

It is, as we have seen, the accepted doctrine with 
the Biologists of Evolution that new Organs are 
never really new, but everywhere and always simply 
-developments of some pre-existing structure. It is a 

* Transac, Linnssan Society, Vol. xxiv. On the Development of 
Chloeon. 



266 



The Unity of Nature. 



necessary consequence of this doctrine that such 
developments must begin with stages anterior to the 
possibility of use, and in this stage they may easily be 
confounded with those which have become atrophied 
by disuse. The most prominent and startling example 
of this phenomenon which perhaps is now to be found 
in Nature, is the existence in the same great group 
of the Cetacea, or Whales, of rudimentary bones 
representing the pelvis, and the other bones of the 
hind limbs of terrestrial quadrupeds, — a fact to 
which we must now add the farther discovery that 
the muscles also which are appropriated to the move- 
ment of these hind limbs in the terrestrial Mammalia, 
are to be traced in the anatomy of the Whales in 
a like condition of complete dissociation from the 
possibility of use. It has been usual among the 
disciples of the Darwinian hypothesis to assume 
that in all cases these useless Organs are not rudi- 
ments but remains — not roots which may yet have 
the opportunity of flourishing, but branches of an, 
old stem which has decayed and has left them as 
wrecks behind. It is needless to point out that 
both of these suppositions are equally consistent with 
the Theory of Evolution — both equally involving 
the idea that the most extensive changes in species, 
involving both form, and food, and habitat, are 
quite possibly within the range of development 
through ordinary generation. But if we assume 



Lines of Variation Pre- Determined. 267 



that in all cases where such useless members are 
found, they are always remnants, and never germs 
— that they always represent members which were 
once in full development, and in actual use, and 
never represent members which are merely capable 
of development in the future, — then we are no nearer 
than we were before to the real Origin of Organic 
Structures. It obliges us to suppose that the 
ancestors of Whales were once terrestrial quad- 
rupeds, and in that case we start with the con- 
ception of hind limbs, and of the Quadrupedal 
Mammal, fully formed and perfectly developed. 
Whereas, if we accept the possibility of useless 
Organs being the beginnings and rudiments of 
structures which are there because the Germ has 
always within it the tendency to produce them, 
then we catch sight of an idea which has the 
double advantage of going nearer to the Origin of 
Species, and of being in harmony with the analogy 
of natural operations as we see them now. 

No one knew better than Mr. Darwin that the 
weakest part of his theory is that which assumes 
variations to be accidental, and the successful 
variations to be the mere " selected " survivors of 
thousands which have arisen and died because they 
did not happen to coincide with favouring condi- 
tions. Indeed he avowed that this part of his 
theory was merely provisional, and nothing more 



268 



The Unity of Nature. 



than a confession of our complete ignorance of any- 
definite Law in the phenomena of Variation. Believ- 
ing as I do in the Reign of Law in Nature, and 
that there is no established order of events which 
can possibly be accidental, I cannot doubt that if 
Species have been begun and established through 
birth and ordinary generation, the rise and estab- 
lishment of every variety has followed a pre- 
determined course, and the mould of every new 
Organ and every new development has been implicit 
in every Germ. We know this to be so within the 
limits of Specific Forms, in every existing ovum : 
and it is no more difficult to believe that the same 
principle holds good for every deviation from those 
Specific Forms which may lie or have lain in a more 
distant future. How it is so is, indeed, in the 
highest degree inconceivable. Solomon asks, "Is 
there any taste in the white of an egg ? " But there 
is another question much more significant. Is there 
any structure in the white of an egg ? None that 
can be detected by any human method of examina- 
tion. Yet out of that material, by the application 
of nothing beyond a little heat, the most elaborate 
structure is developed along lines of growth which 
are rigorously predetermined. And if we see this 
to be the fact in the case of an egg, and in the case 
of every seed, where no mould is visible, it seems 
much more easy to conceive it in cases where the 



Germinal Structures must be Useless. 269 



moulds of new Organs can be actually seen as rudi- 
mentary structures useless to the individual creature 
which contains them. And then it is always to 
be remembered that even if we suppose all visible 
rudiments of Organs to be invariably relics of the 
past, we know that some other set of Organs must 
have been on the rise as a substitute for those 
which were in course of atrophy and decay. If 
Whales, for example, are indeed descended from 
terrestrial quadrupeds which had a fully developed 
pelvis and posterior limbs, then the new Organ 
fitted for the propulsion of the animal in water, 
which is almost exclusively the tail, must have 
existed first in germs, and then in stages of pre- 
paration, before its use was begun and before that 
use was perfected. In any case,, therefore, we 
come back to the idea of all Organic growths 
being implicit in their respective Germs. It is 
quite true that in Nature as we now see it these 
Germs are always born from pre-existing Organisms. 
But our Reason tells us that this process must have 
had a beginning, and science, in so far as its evi- 
dence is available, indicates very clearly successive 
stages of creation, — and times comparatively recent 
when all existing- genera began to be. 

The dictum seems to be true now, " Omne vivum 
ab ovo." But the converse proposition, " Omne 
ovum ab vivo," would involve us in an Eterr.il 



The Unity of Natter e. 



Series with no Beginning. It can be true only in 
that transcendental sense in which we can affirm 
that every Germ must have come from some great 
primal Source and Fount of Life. But all reasoning 
and all evidence goes to establish the conception 
that each of these Germs has now, and has always 
had, its own fixed and predetermined line of march. 
In its wonderful, invisible, and incomprehensible 
structure, every Ovum does not grow up to the uses 
which are to be. We strain our imaginations to 
conceive the processes of Creation, whilst in reality 
they are- around us daily. Perhaps if we had been 
present at the birth of some new animal Form we 
should have seen nothing very different from, and 
certainly nothing more wonderful than, we see 
now. It is only familiarity that has veiled their 
mystery. It is only thoughtlessness that makes us 
think that we are not even now in the middle of a 
truly Creative Work. It is most probable that at no 
stage of it, if we had been staring with all our eyes, 
and listening with all our ears, would we have seen 
or heard anything which is not to be seen and heard 
in the world around us. The first introduction of a 
Germ Would probably have been invisible. From 
the Beginning Creation would have seemed to us a 
orowth and not a manufacture. Nor is it con- 
ceivable that there should have been then a wider 
difference between the first Germs of things, and the 



Development of Germs. 271 



Forms and Functions which were to be developed 
out of them, than the difference which in this respect 
prevails in the existing world. For this difference 
in many cases amounts to the most absolute con- 
trast, and extends to every feature which is recog- 
nisable either by the senses or the intellect. Nor 
is this contrast confined to cases in which fragments 
of matter apparently formless swell and grow into 
complicated structures. It extends to cases in which 
creatures apparently perfect, and which are certainly 
highly Organised, become changed in everything 
which constitutes their visible identity. When we 
think of the mystery involved in the metamorphoses 
of Insects and in the corresponding phenomena of 
alternate generation in other classes of the Animal 
Kingdom, we must see what unlimited possibilities 
of Creation lie open in methods which are in full 
operation round us. In the higher animals the 
development of Germs is carried on in vital and 
physical connection with the perfected Organism of 
the mother, and the cycle of changes which lead up 
to the completion of the parent Form is a cycle 
which thus appears to be wholly governed by the 
surrounding medium. But when we look at the 
metamorphoses of Insects, no such delusion is pos- 
sible. A creature which to all appearance is fully 
formed, and which has led a separate and indepen- 
dent existence, suddenly lays itself to sleep. In that 



272' The Unity of Nature. 



condition, without any food, — without any contact 
with any directing physical agency external to itself, 
— its Organisation is wholly altered- — its whole body 
is re-arranged — its old members dissolve and dis- 
appear, — new members emerge, and in a few days or 
weeks are perfected in form and in power. More- 
over, that form and that power are both for uses 
which, so far as the creature's previous " experience " 
is concerned, are absolutely new. 

With such " leaps " as this in the Creative Work 
going on in every field, and stream, and sea around 
us, we may have the utmost confidence that the 
same Work has involved the same principles through 
all time. From the beginning of it there has been 
no chance — none of its results have been attained 
by accident — none in Physics by the mere clash 
of Atoms — none in Vitality by the mere " struggle 
for existence." Existence has come before struggle, 
and not after it. There never has been "experi- 
ence " till the faculties by which it is acquired have 
been first given and then set to work. There never 
has been any "use" till the Organs have been formed 
by which service could be rendered. Creation and 
Evolution, therefore, when these terms have been 
cleared from intellectual confusion, are not antago- 
nistic conceptions mutually exclusive. They are 
harmonious and complementary. In this aspect 
both conceptions are equally, thoroughly, and in- 



Creation & Evolution Complementary Notions. 273 



tensely anthropopsychic — both absolutely demanding 
as a condition of the facts being rendered intelligible 
that Utility should be recognised as an end before 
it can possibly have been made use of as a means. 
Under whatever cloud of words men may endea- 
vour to conceal it, our recognition of this universal 
fact and law in the genesis of Organic Functions is 
the recognition of Mind by Mind, — the recognition 
by the human mind of operations which are intelli- 
gible to it only because they are operations having 
a close analogy with its own. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



Man as the Representative of the 
Supernatural. 

HE denial and exclusion of what is called 



" The Supernatural " in our explanations of 
Nature, is the same doctrine in another form as the 
denial and exclusion of Anthropopsychism. The 
connection may not be evident at first sight, but it 
arises from the fact that the human Mind is really 
the type, and the only type, of that which men call 
the Supernatural. It would be well if this word 
were altogether banished from our vocabulary. It 
is in the highest degree ambiguous and deceptive. 
It assumes that the system of "Nature" in which 
we live and of which we form a part, is limited to 
purely physical agencies linked together by nothing 
but mechanical necessity. There might indeed be 
no harm in this limitation of the word Nature if it 
could possibly be adhered to. But it is not possible 
to adhere to it, and that for the best of all reasons, 




The Supernatural* 



275 



because even inanimate Nature, as we habitually 
see it, and are obliged to speak of it, is not a Sys- 
tem which gives us the idea of being governed and 
guided by mechanical necessity. No wonder men 
find it difficult to believe in the Supernatural, if by 
the Supernatural they mean any Agency which is 
nowhere present in the visible and intelligible Uni- 
verse, or is not implicitly represented and continu- 
ally reflected there. For indeed in this sense no 
Christian can believe in the Supernatural, — in a 
Creation from which the Creator has been banished, 
or has withdrawn Himself. On the other hand, if 
by the Supernatural we mean an Agency which, 
while ever present in the material and intelligible 
Universe, is not confined to it, but transcends it, 
then indeed the difficulty is not in the believing of 
it, but in the disbelieving of it. No man can really 
hold that the Material System which is visible or in- 
telligible to us is anything more than a fragment or a 
part. No man can believe that its existing arrange- 
ments of Matter and of Force are self-caused, self- 
originated, and self-sustained. It is not possible, 
therefore, so to "crib, cabin, and confine" our con- 
ceptions of Nature as to exclude elements which 
essentially belong to what is called the Supernatural. 
And there is another reason why it is impossible to 
adhere to such conceptions of the Natural, and that 
is, that it would compel us to exclude the Mind of 



2j6 



The Unity of 'Nature. 



Man, and indeed the lesser minds of all living 
things, from our scientific definition of Nature, and 
to establish an absolute and rigorous separation 
between all of these and the world in which they 
move and act. We have seen not only how im- 
practicable such a separation is, but how false it is 
to the facts of science. The same condemnation 
must fall on every conception of the Universe which 
assumes this separation as not only important but 
fundamental Yet this is the very separation on 
which those philosophers absolutely depend who 
condemn what they call the Supernatural in our 
conceptions and explanations of the world. And in 
the interest of their own argument they are quite 
right in keeping to this separation as indispensable 
for their purpose. In order to exclude from Nature 
what they call the Supernatural, it is absolutely 
necessary that they should in the first place exclude 
Man. If Nature be nothing but Matter, Force, 
and Mechanical Necessity, then Man belongs to 
the Supernatural, and is indeed the very embodi- 
ment and representation of it. 

Accordingly this identification of Man with the 
Supernatural is necessarily and almost unconsciously 
involved in language which is intended to be strictly 
philosophical, and in the most careful utterances of 
our most distinguished scientific men. Thus Pro- 
fessor Tyndall, in his Belfast Address to the British 



TyndalPs Elimination of the Supernatural. 277 



Association, uses these words : " Our earliest his- 
toric ancestors fell back also upon experience, but 
with this difference, that the particular experiences 
which furnished the weft and woof of their theories 
were drawn, not from the study of Nature, but 
from what lay much closer to them— the observa- 
tion of men." Here Man is especially contradis- 
tinguished from Nature; and accordingly we find 
in the next sentence that this idea is connected 
with a condemnation of the error of seeing our- 
selves — that is, the Supernatural in Nature. " Their 
theories," the Professor goes on to say, "accord- 
ingly took an anthropomorphic form." Further on, 
in the same Address, the same antithesis is still 
more distinctly expressed, thus : "If Mr. Darwin 
rejects the notion of creative power acting after 
human fashion, it certainly is not because he is 
unacquainted with the numberless exquisite adapta- 
tions on which the notion of a supernatural artificer 
is founded." Here we see that the idea of "acting- 
after human fashion " is treated as synonymous with 
the idea of a " supernatural artificer ; " and the same 
identification may be observed running throughout 
the language which is commonly employed to con- 
demn what is sometimes called Anthropomorphism 
and at other times is called the Supernatural. 

The two propositions, therefore, which are really 
involved in the thoroughgoing denial of Anthropo- 



2 ;8 



The Unity of Nature, 



psychism and the Supernatural are the following : 
ist, that there is nothing except Man which is above 
or outside of mere Matter and Force in Nature 
as we see and know it ; 2nd, that in the System of 
Nature as thus seen and known, there are no phe- 
nomena due to Mind having any analogies with our 
own. 

Surely these propositions have been refuted the 
moment the definition of them has been attained. 
We have only to observe, in the first place, the 
strange and anomalous position in which it places 
Man. As regards at least the higher faculties of 
his mind, he is allowed no place in Nature, and no 
fellowship with any other thing or any other Being 
outside of Nature. He is absolutely alone — out 
of all relation with the Universe around him, and 
under a complete delusion when he sees in any 
part of it any mental homologies with his own 
Intelligence, or with his own Will, or with liis 
own Affections. Does this absolute solitariness of 
position as regards the ' higher attributes of Man. 
■ — does it sound reasonable, or possible, or con- 
sistent with some of the most fundamental concep- 
tions of science ? How, for example, does it accord 
with that great conception whose truth and sweep 
become every day more apparent — the Unity of 
Nature ? 

How can it be true that Man is so outside of 



Fundamental Inconsistency in Agnosticism, 279 



that Unity that the very notion of seeing any- 
thing like himself in it is the greatest of all philo- 
sophical heresies ? Does not the very possibility 
of science consist in the possibility of reducing 
all natural phenomena to purely natural concep- 
tions, which must be related to the Intellect of 
Man when they are worked out and apprehended 
by it ? And if, according to the latest theories, 
Man is himself a Product of Evolution, and is, 
therefore, in every atom of his Body and in every 
function of his Mind a part and a child of Nature, 
is it not in the highest degree illogical so to separate 
him from it as to condemn him for seeing in it some 
image of himself ? If he is its product and its child, 
is it not certain that he is right when he sees and 
feels the indissoluble bonds of unity which unite him 
to the great System of things in which he lives ? 

This fundamental inconsistency in the Agnostic 
philosophy becomes all the more remarkable when 
we find that the very men who tell us that we are 
not One with anything above us, are the same who 
insist that we are One with everything beneath 
us. Whatever there is in us or about us which 
is purely animal we may see everywhere ; but 
whatever there is in us purely intellectual and 
moral, we delude ourselves if we think we see 
it anywhere. There are abundant homologies 
between our bodies and the bodies of the beasts, 



280 



The Unity of Nature. 



but there are no homologies between our minds 
and any Mind which lives and manifests itself in 
Nature. Our livers and our lungs, our vertebrae 
and our nervous systems, are identical in origin 
and in function with those of the living creatures 
round us ; but there is nothing in Nature or above 
it which corresponds to our Foretkought, or Design, 
or Purpose — to our love of the Good or our admi- 
ration of the Beautiful — to our indignation with 
the wicked, or to our pity for the suffering and 
the fallen. I venture to think that no system of 
philosophy that has ever been taught on Earth 
lies under such a weight of antecedent improba- 
bility ; and this improbability increases in direct 
proportion to the success of science in tracing the 
Unity of Nature, and in showing step by step how 
its laws and their results can be brought more and 
more into direct relation with the Mind and Intellect 
of Man. 

Let us test this philosophy from another point 
of view, and see how far it is consistent with our 
advancing knowledge of those combinations of 
natural Force by which the system of the physical 
Universe appears to be sustained. 

We may often see in the writings of our phy- 
sical teachers in the present day reference made 
to a celebrated phrase of the old and abandoned 
school of Aristotelian physics — a phrase invented 



The Phi'ase "Nature Abhors a Vacuum." 281 



by that old school to express a familiar fact — that 
it is extremely difficult, if not absolutely impossible, 
to produce a perfect vacuum — that is to say, a 
space which shall be absolutely empty. The 
phrase was this : " Nature abhors a vacuum." It 
is now continually held up as a perfect example 
and type of the old habit of thought which vitiates 
all true physical reasoning. Now let us observe 
what this error is. As a forcible and picturesque 
way of expressing a physical truth — that the 
difficulty of producing a vacuum is extreme, that 
Nature sets, as it were, her face against our 
doing it — the phrase is a good one, and conveys 
an excellent idea of the general fact. Sir W. 
Grove says of it, that it is " an aphorism, which, 
though cavilled at and ridiculed by the self-suffi- 
ciency of some modern philosophers, contains in 
a terse though somewhat metaphorical form the 
expression of a comprehensive truth." But there 
is this error in the phrase (if indeed it was or 
ever could be literally understood) — that it gives 
for the general fact a wrong cause, inasmuch as 
it ascribes to the material and inanimate Forces 
of Nature, whose simple pressures are concerned 
in the result, certain dispositions that are known 
to us as affections of Mind alone. In short, it 
ascribes to the mere elementary Forces of Matter 
— not to a living Agency using these as tools. 



282 The Unity of Nature, 

but to mere Material Force — the attributes of 
Mind. 

Now it is well worthy of remark that, so far as 
this error is concerned, the language of physical 
science is full of it — steeped in it ; and that in 
this sense it is chargeable with a kind of Anthro- 
pomorphism which is really open to the gravest 
objection. To see Mind in Nature, or, according 
as Nature may be denned, to see Mind outside of 
Nature, acknowledging it to be Mind, and treating 
it as such — this is one thing — and this is the true 
and legitimate Anthropopsychism which some phy- 
sicists denounce. But to see Mind in Material 
Forces alone, and to ascribe its attributes to them 
— this is equally Anthropomorphism, but a form 
of it which is indeed open to all the objections 
they express. This, nevertheless, is the Anthropo- 
morphism which gives habitually its colouring to 
their thoughts and its spirit to their language. 

Let me explain what I mean by some examples. 
I will take, first, the theory of Development, or the 
derivative hypothesis, which, as applied to the 
history of Organic Life, is now accepted by a large 
number of scientific men, if not as certainly true, 
at least as an hypothesis which comes nearer than 
any other to the truth. Whether that theory be 
true or not, it is a theory saturated throughout 
with the ideas of utility and fitness, and of adap- 



Development Represented as Adaptation. 283 



tation, as the governing principles and causes of 
the harmony of Nature. Its central conception is, 
that in the history of Organic Life changes have 
somehow always come about exactly in proportior 
as the need of them arose. But how is it that the 
laws of growth are so correlated with utility that 
they should in this manner work together ? Why 
should varied and increasing utility operate in the 
requisite direction of varied and increasing deve- 
lopments ? The connection is not one of logical ne- 
cessity. Not only can we conceive it otherwise, but 
we know that it is otherwise beyond certain bounds 
and limits. It is not an universal law that organic 
growths arise in proportion to all needs, or are 
strengthened by all exertion. It is a law prevailing 
only within certain limits ; and it is not possible to 
describe the facts concerning it without employing 
the language which is expressive of mental purpose. 

Accordingly, I have pointed out in a former 
work * that Mr. Darwin himself does use this lan- 
guage perpetually, and to an extent far exceeding 
that in which it is used by almost any other natural 
philosopher. Some writers who see in his theory 
nothing but its materialistic aspects have taken 
alarm at this language, and have warned him of its 
dangerous significance. But he never — to the last 
— accepted a warning that would have hindered 

" " Reign of Law," Chap. I. 



284 



The Unity of Nature. 



him in that faithful interpretation of Nature which 
consisted in simply expressing what he saw. Ac- 
cordingly in none of his works has this teleological 
tendency of language been more marked as an 
inevitable necessity of thought than in one of his 
very latest contributions to science. •* The Move- 
ments of Plants " have been traced by him through 
hours, and days, and months of the most patient 
and accurate observation. It is found as a funda- 
mental fact that the growth of all plants is effected 
along lines of movement which may be described as 
spiral or screwing, and to this fundamental fact the 
term " Circumnutation " has been applied. Now 
the physical cause of this movement is at least 
obscure, but, on the other hand, the purposes which 
it subserves are not obscure at all. All that can be 
said about the physical cause is, that <£ it probably 
arises from changes in the turgescence of the 
cells " * taking place alternately upon opposite sides 
of the growing part. But this is little more than a 
re-statement of the fact in another form of words. 
The increased turgescence of the cells on one side 
means or involves increased growth on that side. 
The other side remaining comparatively still, neces- 
sarily exerts a pull upon the moving side, as an 
anchor exerts a pull upon the swinging of a ship. 
This pull turns or twists the moving side towards 

* Page 663. 



" Circumnutation" Subservient to a Purpose. 285 



itself, and thus a constant twisting or spiral motion 
is established in all growing vegetation. 

But how comes it that the turgescence of cell- 
growth should be unequal and alternate ? It is no 
physical explanation of circumnutation merely to 
state its essential condition as a fact. Mr. Darwin 
calls the changes in turgescence "spontaneous" 
— that is to say, they are innate and their causes 
are unknown. But now, when we come to the uses 
of circumnutation, we find them to be clear, definite, 
and almost infinitely various. By means of it the 
roots of plants seek the ground, — pierce the soil, 
—twist themselves away from obstacles, and run 
in the direction of moisture or of nourishment. 
By the same means the upward shoots from 
germs which are buried underground curl them- 
selves into an arch, so that with greater strength 
and with greater mechanical advantage they can 
burst through the substance and the hardened sur- 
face of the soil. By the same twisting movements 
they can face the Sun, or they can close their petals 
against cold and storm — they can lay their leaves, 
in a direction least exposed to frosts and blights 
—they can sleep and they can wake — they can 
avoid objects that hinder them from the light — they- 
can seek the shade from excessive glare — they can 
rear their heads alone, or they can clasp and entwine 
themselves round necessary supports. 



286 



The Unity of Nature. 



Every one who has observed even cursorily the 
growth of plants must have seen cases in which they 
seem not only to have the senses of a living animal, 
but to have powers of self-adjustment and of struc- 
tural self-adaptation which no animal possesses. It 
is common, for example, to see a tree which has been 
planted on the edge of a steep bank throw out roots 
of extraordinary size and strength upon the side 
which needs special support. The same versatility 
of powers is visible in a thousand other cases. Mr. 
Darwin has traced it through an immense variety 
of applications, and in describing it he sees, and he 
expresses in vivid language, the mental attributes 
of Purpose which it embodies. He speaks of the 
roots of plants " thus following with unerring skill 
a line of least resistance." He speaks of a " curious 
special contrivance for bursting the seed-coats whilst 
beneath the ground— namely, a peg at the base of 
the hypocotyl projecting at right angles which holds 
down the lower half of the seed-coats, whilst the 
growth of the arched part of the hypocotyl lifts up 
the upper half and thus splits them in twain."* He 
speaks of circumnutating movements " being so 
arranged that the blade stands vertically during 
the night, reassuming its former position on the 
following morning." t He even speaks of the tip 
of a root "perceiving the air to be moister on 

* "Movements of Plants," p. 556. f Ibid., p. 561. 



The Central Idea of Mr. Darwin's System. 287 



one side than on the other, and transmitting an in- 
fluence to the adjoining part which leads towards 
the source of moisture." * Finally he says that 
"in almost every case (in plant life) we can clearly 
perceive the final purpose or advantage of the 
several movements." 

Mr. Darwin does not use this language with 
any theological purpose nor in connection with 
any metaphysical speculation. He uses it simply 
and naturally for no other reason than that he 
cannot help it. The Correlation of Natural Forces 
so adjusted as to work together for the production 
of use in the functions, for the enjoyments, and 
for the beauty of Life — this is the central idea 
of his system ; and it is an idea which cannot 
be worked out in detail without habitual use of 
the language which is moulded on our own con- 
sciousness of the mental powers by which all our 
own adjustments are achieved. This is what, 
perhaps, the greatest Observer that has ever lived 
cannot help observing in Nature ; and so his lan- 
guage is thoroughly anthropopsychic. Seeing in 
the methods pursued in Nature a constant embodi- 
ment of his own intellectual conceptions, and a close 
analogy with the methods which his own mind re- 
cognises as " contrivance," he rightly uses the forms 
of expression which convey the work of Mind. 

* " Movements of Plants," p. 572. 



288 



The Unity of Nature. 



" Rightly," I say, provided the full scope and 
meaning of this language be not repudiated. I 
do not mean that naturalists should be always 
following up their language to theological con- 
clusions, or that any fault should be found with 
them when they stop where the sphere of mere 
physical observation terminates. But those who 
seek to remodel philosophy upon the results of 
that observation cannot consistently borrow all the 
advantage of anthropopsychic language, and then 
denounce it when it carries them beyond the point 
at which they desire to stop. If in the words which 
we recognise as best describing the facts of Nature 
there be elements of meaning to which their whole 
force and descriptive power is due, then these 
elements of meaning must be admitted as essential 
to a just conception and to a true interpretation 
of what we see. The analogies which help us to 
understand the works of Nature are not, as it were, 
foreign material imported into the facts, but are 
part of these facts, and constitute the light which 
shines from them upon the Intellect of Man. In 
exact proportion as we believe that Intellect to be 
a product of Nature, and to be united to it by in- 
dissoluble ties of birth, of Structure, and of Function, 
in the same proportion may we be sure that its 
Organs of vision are adjusted to the realities of the 
world, and that its innate perceptions of analogy 



Development Theory Fotmded on Teleology. 289- 



and resemblance have a close relation to the truth. 
The theory of Development is not only consistent 
with teleological explanation, but it is founded on 
teleology, and on nothing else. It sees in every- 
thing the results of a System which is ever acting 
for the best, always producing something more 
perfect or more beautiful than before, and inces- 
santly eliminating whatever is faulty or less per- 
fectly adapted to every new condition. Professor 
Tyndall himself cannot describe this System with- 
out using the most intensely anthropopsychic lan- 
guage : " The continued effort of animated nature 
is to improve its conditions and raise itself to a 
loftier level." * 

Again I say, it is quite right to use this language, 
provided its ultimate reference to Mind be admitted 
and not repudiated. But if this language be per- 
sistently applied and philosophically defended as 
applicable to material Force, otherwise than as the 
instrument and tool of Mind, then it is language 
involving far more than the absurdity of the old 
mediaeval phrase that " Nature abhors a vacuum." 
It ceases to be a mere picturesque expression, and 
becomes a definite ascription to Matter of the 
highest attributes of Mind. If Nature cannot feel 
"abhorrence," neither can it cherish "aspirations." 
If it cannot hate, neither can it love, nor contrive,. 

* Belfast Address. 

T 



290 



The Unity of Nature, 



nor adjust, nor look to the future, nor think about 
"loftier levels " there. 

Professor Tyndall in the same Address has given 
us an interesting anecdote of a very celebrated man 
whom the world has lately lost. He tells us that 
he heard the great Swiss naturalist Agassiz express 
•an almost sad surprise that the Darwinian theory 
should have been so extensively accepted by the 
best intellects of our time. And this surprise 
seems again in some measure to have surprised 
Professor Tyndall. Now it so happens that I have 
perhaps the means of explaining the real difficulty 
felt by Agassiz in accepting the modern theory of 
Evolution. I had not seen that distinguished man 
for nearly five-and-thirty years. But he was one 
of those gifted Beings who stamp an indelible im- 
pression on the memory ; and in 1842 he had left 
an enthusiastic letter on my father's table at In- 
veraray on finding it largely occupied by scientific 
works. Across that long interval of time I ventured 
lately to seek a renewal of acquaintance, and during 
the year which proved to be the last of his life, 
I asked him some questions on his own views on 
the history and origin of Organic Forms. In his 
reply Agassiz sums up in the following words his 
objection to the theory of Natural Selection as 
affording any satisfying explanation of the facts for 
which it professes to account : — ".The truth is, that 



Agassiz Objection to the Darwinian Theory. 291 



Life has all the wealth of endowment of the most 
comprehensive mental manifestations, and none of 
the simplicity of physical phenomena." 

Here we have the testimony of another among 
the very greatest of modern Observers that wealth 
— immense and immeasurable wealth — of Mind is 
the one fact above all others observable in Nature, 
and especially in the adaptations of Organic Life. 
It was because he could see no adequate place or 
room reserved for this fact in the theory of De- 
velopment that Agassiz rejected it as not satisfy- 
ing the conditions of the problem to be solved. 
Probably this may be the fault of the forms in 
which it has been propounded, and of the strenuous 
endeavours of many of its supporters to shut out all 
interpretations of a higher kind. But of this we 
may be sure, that if men should indeed ultimately 
become convinced that species have been all born 
just as individuals are now all born, and that such 
has been the universal method of Creation, this 
conviction will not only be found to be soluble, 
so to speak, in the old beliefs respecting a creative 
Mind, but it will be unintelligible and inconceivable 
without them, so that men in describing the history 
and aim and direction of Evolution, will be com- 
pelled to use substantially the same language in 
which they have hitherto spoken of the history 
of Creation. 



292 



The Unity of Nature. 



Mr. Mivart has indeed remarked in a very able 
work,'" as Mr. Wallace had remarked before him, 
that the teleological language used so freely by 
Mr. Darwin and others is purely metaphorical. 
As I have already elsewhere f dealt with this criti- 
cism, I need only repeat here, what cannot be 
insisted upon too firmly, that even if it were strictly 
accurate, it had no adverse bearing upon the evi- 
dence which this language of so-called metaphor 
involves. It is not strictly accurate because there is 
no real element of metaphor except where the out- 
ward forms of the human Personality are ascribed 
to Nature. Nature has no hands and no brain; 
but these members, even in Man, are regarded as 
" Organs," and as nothing else — the visible repre- 
sentatives of invisible powers : and where the names 
of these organs, and of such like, are not figuratively 
used in respect to Nature, — where nothing is ex- 
pressed but the facts of teleological adaptation, there 
is not, properly speaking, any metaphor at all. But 
putting this aside for the moment, and granting 
that in the description of the invisible phenomena 
of Mind it is difficult to avoid all reference to the 
outward and visible forms in which these phenomena 
are manifested in us — even so, this metaphorical ele- 
ment does not affect the evidence supplied by the 
inevitable phraseology of all natural philosophers 

* " Genesis of Species." t " Reign of Law," Chap. I. 



Admission Implied in the Use of Metaphors. 293 



when it is their business to describe what they see 
in Nature. For what purpose are metaphors used ? 
Is it not as a means of making plain to our own 
understandings the principle of things, and of 
tracing amid the varieties of phenomena the essen- 
tial Unities of Nature ? In this sense all Language 
is full of metaphor, being indeed composed of little 
else. That is to say, the whole structure and 
architecture of Language consists of words which 
transfer and apply to one sphere of investigation 
ideas which have been derived from another, 
because there also the same ideas are seen 
to be expressed, only under some difference of 
form. Accordingly, when naturalists, describing 
plants or animals, use the language of Contriv- 
ance to describe the Adaptations of Function, they 
must use it because they feel it to be a help in the 
understanding of the facts. When, for example, 
we are told that flowers are constructed in a pecu- 
liar manner " in order that " they may catch the 
probosces of Moths or the backs of Bees, and that 
this adaptation again is necessary " in order that " 
these insects should - carry the fertilising pollen 
from flower to flower, nothing more may be 
immediately intended by the writer than that 
all this elaborate mechanism does as a matter of 
fact attain this end, and that it may be fitly de- 
scribed "as if" it had been arranged "in order 



294 The Unity of Natter e. 



that" these things might happen. But this use 
of language is none the less an acknowledgment 
of the truth that the facts of Nature are best 
brought home and explained to the Understand- 
ing, and to the Intelligence of Man, by stating 
them in terms of the relation which they obviously 
bear to the familiar operations of our own Mind 
and Spirit. 

And this is the invariable result of all physical 
inquiry. In this sense Nature is essentially an- 
thropopsychic. Man sees his own Mind everywhere 
reflected in it — his own, not in quantity but in. 
quality — his own fundamental attributes of Intel- 
lect, and, to a wonderful and mysterious degree, 
even his own methods of operation. 

It is really curious and instructive to observe 
how even those who struggle hardest to avoid the 
language of Anthropopsychism in the interpreta- 
tions of Nature are compelled to make use of the 
analogies of our own mental operations as the only 
possible exponents of what we see. Let us look, for 
example, at the definition of Life given by Mr. 
Herbert Spencer. It is a very old endeavour to 
construct such definitions, and not a very profitable 
f one : inasmuch as Life is only known to us as itself, 
and all attempts to reduce it to other conceptions 
are never anything but mere playing with empty 
words. But it is not without instruction to observe. 



Mr. Herbert Spencer's Definition of Life. 295 



that Mr. Spencer's laborious analysis comes to this : 
" Life is the continuous Adjustment of internal re- 
lations to external relations." Bare, abstract, and 
evasive of the most characteristic facts as this for- 
mula is, it does contain at least one definite idea as 
to how Life comes to be. Life is an " Adjustment." 
This is a purely anthropopsychic conception, con- 
veying the idea of that kind of co-ordination between 
different powers or elements which is the result of 
constructive Purpose. I have already pointed out 
in a former chapter that all combinations are not 
Adjustments. The whole force and meaning of the 
word consists in its reference to intentional arrange- 
ment. No combination can properly be called an 
Adjustment if it be purely accidental. When, there- 
fore, Life is represented as an Adjustment, this is 
the mental image which is reproduced ; and in so 
far as it does reproduce this idea, and does con- 
sciously express it, the formula has at least some 
intelligible meaning. If, indeed, it has any plausi- 
bility or approach to truth at all, this is the element 
in it from which this plausibility is derived. 

We may take another case. Mr. Matthew Arnold, 
a writer of great distinction both as a critic and as 
a poet, has invented a new phrase for that concep- 
tion of a Divine Being which alone, as the ultimate 
residuum of thought, can be justified by such 
evidence as we possess. And what is that phrase ? 



296 



The Unity of Natun 



" The Eternal, not ourselves, which makes for 
Righteousness." It is evident that whatever mean- 
ing there may be in this artificial and cumbrous 
phrase is entirely derived from its Anthropopsy- 
chism. An Agency which " makes for " something 
— that something, too, being in the future, and 
being also in itself an abstract moral and intel- 
lectual conception — what can such an agency be 
conceived to be ? " Making for" an object of any 
kind is a purely human image — an image, too, 
derived primarily not from the highest efforts of 
human Will, but from those which are represented 
in the exercises of the Body, and the skill with 
which, in athletic contentions, some distant goal 
may be reached and won. Such is the attempt 
of a very eminent man to instruct us how we are 
to think of God without seeing in Him or in His 
world anything analogous to our own thought and 
work. 

Nor is it wonderful that this attempt should fail, 
when we consider what it is an attempt to do — 
to establish an absolute separation between Man 
and Nature ; to set up Man as something above 
Nature, and outside of it ; and yet to affirm that 
there is no other Being, and no other Intelligence, 
in a like position. And if anything can render 
this attempt more unreasonable, it must be the 
further attempt to reach this result through science, 



• 



Professor TyndalVs Test of Physical Truth. 297 

— science, the very possibility of which depends 
on, and consists in, the possibility of reducing all 
natural phenomena within the terms of human 
thought, so that its highest generalisations are 
always the most abstract intellectual conceptions. 
Science is the systematic knowledge of relations ; 
but that which perceives relations must be itself 
related. All explanation consists in nothing else 
than in establishing the relation which some order 
of external facts bears to some corresponding order 
of Perception and of Thought ; and it follows from 
this truth, that the highest explanations of pheno- 
mena must always be those which establish such 
relations with the highest faculties of our nature. 
Professor Tyndall, in another part of his Belfast 
Address, like many other writers of the present 
day, goes the length of saying that the great test 
of physical truth is what may be called its " repre- 
sentability," — that is to say, the degree in which 
a given physical conception can, from the analogies 
of experience, be represented in thought. But if 
our power of picturing a physical fact distinctly be 
indeed an indication of a true physical analogy, 
how much more distinctly than any physical fact 
can we picture the characteristic workings of our 
own mental constitution ? Yet these are the con- 
ceptions which, we are told, we are not to cherish, 
because they are anthropomorphic — or, in other 



/ 



* 



298 The Unity of N attire. 

words, because of the very fact that they are so 
familiar to us, and that their mental representability 
is so complete. 

Some, indeed, of our physical teachers, con- 
scious of this necessary and involuntary Anthro- 
popsychism of human thought and speech, struggle 
hard to expel it by inventing phrases which shall 
as far as possible avoid it. But it is well worthy 
of observation, that in exact proportion as these 
phrases do avoid it, they become incompetent to 
describe fully the facts of science. For example, 
let us take again those incipient changes in the 
substance of an egg by which the Organs of the 
future animal are successively laid down — changes 
which have all reference to a purely purposive 
adaptation of that substance to the future discharge 
of separate and special functions. I have already 
referred * to the fact that these changes are now 
commonly described as " differentiations," an abstract 
expression which simply 'means the establishment 
of differences, without any reference to the peculiar 
nature of those differences, or their relations to 
each other and to the whole. But the inadequacy 
of this word to express the facts is surely obvious. 
The processes of dissolution and decay are processes 
of " differentiation " quite as much as the process of 
growth and adaptation to living functions. Blood 

* Chap. I. p. 29. 



The Phrase u Reflex Action!' 299 



is " differentiated " just as much when, upon being 
spilt upon the ground, it separates into fibrin, serum, 
and corpuscles, or finally into its inorganic elements, 
as when, circulating in the vessels, it bathes and 
feeds the various tissues of the living Body. But 
these two operations — these two kinds of " differen- 
tiation " — are not only distinct, but absolutely oppo- 
site in their nature, and there does not seem to 
be much light in that philosophy which insists on 
using the same formula of expression to describe 
them both. It is a phrase which empties the facts, 
as we can see and know them, of all that is special 
in our knowledge of them. 

There is another conspicuous example of the 
same misuse of language which is common in con- 
nection with phenomena of the very highest interest 
and importance in the science of Physiology. I 
refer to the regular formula of words which is 
almost always employed to designate and define 
the automatic actions of the animal frame. The 
set phrase for this class of movement is " Reflex 
. Action." Now this phrase is not only wholly in- 
competent from weakness and insufficiency to 
convey any adequate conception of the facts as 
they exist in Nature, but worse than this — it in- 
volves conceptions and suggests analogies which 
are altogether misleading and erroneous. " Reflex " 
etymologically means of course "turned back" or 



3O0 



The Unity of Nature. 



" bent back." And this is the sense in which it is 
properly and accurately applied to such phenomena, 
for example, as the reflection of Light or of Radiant 
Heat. In these cases the Radiant Energy impinges 
-upon some surface, and is turned or bent back from 
it so as to take a new path in a different direction. 
But the essential idea in all such cases is that in 
both paths — the path of incidence, and the new 
path of reflection — the original Energy is the same 
in kind. The light which strikes the surface of the 
Sea is nothing but light when it glances off the 
liquid surface and appears as a vivid gleam upon 
the horizon. Some portions indeed of a beam may 
lie lost or absorbed in the process of reflection, but 
no new element is added. It comes to the reflect- 
ing surface as ethereal undulations, and it leaves it 
again as ethereal undulations, and as nothing else. 

Now, there is no analogy whatever between this 
kind of movement or of action and the highly com- 
plex movements which result automatically in the 
living frame of animals from the stimulation of some 
external nerve. It is quite true that some move- 
ment goes inward to the brain, or to some subor- 
dinate nervous centre, and that some movement 
comes back from that centre in return. But the 
movement which goes is not the same movement 
which returns. The two movements are not only 
far from being identical, but they are not even the 



The Idea of Reflex Action Inept. 301 

same in kind. We might as well describe it as 
" reflex action " when some great fleet weighs 
anchor and puts out to sea in response to a signal 
from the flagship ; or when gunners enveloped in a 
cloud of smoke aim their artillery by directions from 
the top. These are no random similes. They are 
perhaps the closest analogies which could be chosen 
to illustrate the wonders which are performed by 
the animal Organism under some simple stimulus 
applied to the termination of a nerve. In itself that 
stimulus may be said to be a signal and nothing 
more. The reading of it involves the interpretation 
of a Code, and the obeying of the signal by respon- 
sive action involves the simultaneous and the co- 
ordinated action of a host of living structures. In 
all such cases the action which begins is not the 
same kind of action as that which follows. The 
initial movement is one which is uniform and simple, 
having no other office than to rouse, and to suggest 
or order. The resulting movements are multiform 
and complex, with all the functions of interpretation 
and of obedience. There is nothing whatever here 
corresponding to the mere bendings and repetitions 
of physical reflection. 

If there be any purely and merely physical rela- 
tion between the tremors of a nerve and the com- 
plicated movements which arise in answer, it is a 
relation not of identity or even of likeness, bui a 



302 



The Unity of Nature. 



relation, on the contrary, of such essential difference 
as to correspond better with the idea of some total 
transmutation. But even this is a feeble image, 
inasmuch as it retains a trace of the idea of some 
underlying and substantial sameness. But the facts 
of Nature demand imperatively that we should 
admit into our conception of the results which are 
concealed under the words Reflex Action, certain ele- 
ments other than those of mere mechanical motion, 
however changed in direction or transmuted in form. 
In observing the effects, and in reading accounts of 
the effects, of what is called " Reflex Action " in the 
animal economy, and before I had submitted the 
phrase to strict analysis, I had long felt that sense 
of confusion which results from the presentation to 
the Mind of false analogies, of incompetent descrip- 
tion, and of formulae of expression which, pretending 
to be scientific, are in reality nothing but the wilful 
shutting-out of knowledge. It is, however, most 
satisfactory to find that in one of the latest and best 
text-books of Physiology, that of Professor Forster 
of Cambridge, there is a full confession of the in- 
competency of such words as " Reflex Action " to 
describe the relation between the stimulus of an 
"afferent" nerve and the " efferent " movements 
which are carried into responsive pre-adjusted 
action. The two classes of impulse and of resulting 
movement are justly described as really "incom- 



"A Certain Purpose Evident in Reflex Action!' 303 



mensurate." And whilst the purely mechanical or 
physical relation of mere bending or turning is thus 
condemned not only as an inadequate, but as essen- 
tially a false image of the real relation which subsists 
between the antecedent and the consequent pheno- 
mena, that real relation is described and admitted 
in the following remarkable passage : — "In the more 
complex reflex actions of the brainless frog and in 
other cases, the relation is of such a kind as that 
the resulting movement bears an adaptation to the 
stimulus ; the foot is withdrawn from the stimulus, 
or the movement is calculated to push or wipe away 
•the stimulus. In other words, a certain purpose is 
evident in the reflex action." * 

Here we have the formula of expression which is 
almost universally employed by Physiologists to 
describe some of the most important phenomena of 
their science, authoritatively detected and exposed ; 
whilst the mental element of pre-adjustment and 
adaptation, which such phrases are invented to 
avoid and to conceal, is brought out as the most 
prominent and characteristic feature in the scientific 
appreciation and description of facts. 

It is possible, no doubt, by artifices of language 
similar to that which has been here exposed, to 
deprive the facts of Nature — or at least appear to 
deprive them — of their highest significance. More 

* "Text-Book of Physiology," Chap. III. p. 117. 



304 



The Unity of Nature. 



foolish than the fabled Ostrich, we may try to shut 
our eyes against our own perceptions, or we may 
refuse to register them in our language — resorting, 
for the sake of evasion, to some juggleries of speech. 
" Potential existence " is another of those vague 
abstract conceptions which may be, and is, em- 
ployed for a like purpose. It may be applied 
indiscriminately to a mere slumbering force, or to 
an unfulfilled intention, or to an undeveloped 
mental faculty, or to an elaborate preparation of 
foresight and design. If we desire to take refuge 
from the necessity of forming any distinct con- 
ceptions, such phrases are eminently convenient for 
the purpose, whilst under cover of them we may 
cheat ourselves into the belief that we have got 
hold of some definite idea, and perhaps even of an 
important truth. 

All who are puzzled and perplexed by the pre- 
valent teaching on these high matters should 
subject the language in which it is conveyed to 
a careful, systematic, and close analysis. It will 
be found to fall within one or other of these three 
classes : — First, there is the phraseology of those 
who, without any thought either of theological 
dogma or of philosophical speculation, are, above 
all things, observers, and who describe the facts 
they see in whatever language appears most fully 
and most naturally to convey what they see to 



Scientific Phraseology Classified. 305. 

others. The language of such men is what Mr. 
Darwin's language almost always is — eminently 
teleological and anthropopsychic. Next, there 
is the language of those who purposely shut 
out this element of thought, and condemn it as 
unscientific. The language of this class is full of the 
vague abstract phrases to which I have referred — 
" differentiation " — " molecular change " — " harmony 
with environment," and others of a like kind- 
phrases which, in exact proportion to their abstract 
character, are evasive, and fall short of describing 
what is really seen. Lastly, we have the language 
of those who habitually ascribe to Matter the- 
properties of Mind ; using this language not 
metaphorically, like the old Aristotelians whom 
they despise, but literally — declaring that Mind, 
as we know it, must be considered as having: 
been contained " potentially " in Matter, and was 
once nothing but a cosmic vapour or a fiery 
cloud. Well may Professor Tyndall call upon 
us " radically to change our notions of Matter," 
if this be a true view of it ; for in this view it be- 
comes equivalent to " Nature " in that largest and 
widest interpretation to which I referred at the 
close of the last chapter — viz., that in which 
Nature is understood as the whole System of things 
in which we live, and of which we form a part- 
But if this philosophy be true, let us at least 

u 



306 



The Unity of Nature. 



cease to condemn, as the type of all absurdity, 
the old mediaeval explanations of material phe- 
nomena, which ascribe to them affections of the 
Mind. If Matter be so widened in meaning as 
to be the mother and source of Mind, it must surely 
be right and safe enough to see in material things 
those dispositions and activities which are said to 
be nothing but its product in ourselves. 

The truth is, that this conception of Matter 
and of Nature, which is associated with vehe- 
ment denunciations of Anthropomorphism, is itself 
founded on nothing else but Anthropomorphism 
pushed to its very farthest limit. It is entirely 
derived from and founded on the fact that Mind, 
as we see it in ourselves, is in this world insepar- 
ably connected with a material Organism, and on 
the further assumption that Mind is inconceivable 
or cannot be inferred except in the same connec- 
tion. This would be a very unsafe conclusion 
even if the connection between our Bodies and 
our Minds were of such a nature that we could 
not conceive the separation of the two. But so 
far is this from being the case, that, as Professor 
Tyndall most truly says, " it is a connection which 
we know only as an inexplicable fact, and we try 
to soar in a vacuum when we seek to comprehend 
it." The universal testimony of human Speech — 
that sure record of the deepest metaphysical truths 



The Charge of Anthropomorphism Pointless. 307 



— proves that we cannot but think of the Body 
and the Mind as separate — of the Mind as our 
proper selves, and of the Body as indeed external 
to it. Let us never forget that Life, as we know 
it here below, is the antecedent or the cause of 
Organisation, and not its product ; that the peculiar 
combinations of Matter which are the homes and 
abodes of Life are prepared and shaped under the 
control and guidance of that mysterious Power 
which we know as Vitality ; and that no discovery 
of science has ever been able to reduce it to a 
lower level, or to identify it with any Purely 
material Force. And, lastly, we must remember 
that even if it be true that Life and Mind 
have some inseparable connection with the Forces 
which are known to us as material, this would 
not make the supreme agencies in Nature, or 
Nature as a whole, less anthropopsychic. but 
greatly more ; so that it would, if possible, be even 
more unreasonable than it is now to condemn 
Man when he sees in Nature a Mind havino- real 
analogies with his own. 

And now what is the result of this argument — 
what is its scope and bearing ? Truly it is a very 
wide scope indeed — nothing less than this : that 
nothing in Philosophy, in Theology, in Belief, can 
be reasonably rejected or condemned on the sole 
ground that it is anthropopsychic. That is to say, 



308 The Unity of Natter e. 



no adverse presumption can arise against any Con- 
ception, or any Idea, or any Doctrine on the mere 
ground that it rests on the analogies of Human 
Thought. This is a position — purely negative and 
defensive though it be — from which we cannot be 
dislodged, and which holds under its destructive fire 
a thousand different avenues of attack. 

But this is not all. Another result of the same 
argument is to establish a presumption the other 
way. All the analogies of Human Thought are 
in themselves analogies of Nature, and in pro- 
portion as they are built up or are perceived by 
Mind in its higher attributes and work, they are 
part and parcel of natural truth. Man — he whom 
the Greeks call Anthropos, because, as it has 
been supposed, he is the only Being whose look 
is upwards — Man is a part of Nature, and no 
artificial definitions can separate him from it. 
And yet in another sense it is true that Man 
is above Nature — outside of it; and in this 
aspect he is the very type and image of the 
" Supernatural." The instinct which sees this 
image in him is a true instinct, and the conse- 
quent desire of atheistic philosophy to banish 
Anthropopsychism from our conceptions is dic- 
tated by an obvious logical necessity. But in 
this necessity the system is self-condemned. 
F.very advance of science is a new testimony 



Mind in Man the Type of Mind in Nature. 309 



to the supremacy of Mind, and to the corre- 
spondence between the Mind of Man and the 
Mind which is supreme in Nature. Nor yet 
will it be possible, in the face of science, to 
revive that Nature-worship which breathes in 
so many of the old Religions of Mankind. For 
in exalting Mind, science is ever making plainer 
and plainer the inferior position of the purely 
physical aspects of Nature — the subordinate charac- 
ter of what we know as Matter and material Force. 
Has not science, for example, even in these last 
few years, rendered for ever impossible one of 
the oldest and most natural of the Idolatries of 
the world ? It has disclosed to us the physical 
• constitution of the Sun — that great Jieavenly body 
which is one of the chief proximate causes of all 
that we see and enjoy on Earth, and which has 
seemed most naturally the very image of the God- 
head to millions of the human race. We now know 
the Sun to be simply a very large globe of solid 
and of gaseous matter, in a state of fierce and 
flaming incandescence. No man can worship a 
ball of fire, however big ; nor can he feel grate- 
ful to it, nor love it, nor adore it, even though 
its beams be to him the very light of life. Neither 
in it, nor in the mere Physical Forces of which it 
is the centre, can we see anything approaching 
to the rank and dignity of even the humblest 



The Unity of A 7 attire. 



human heart. "What know we greater than the 
Soul ? " It is only when we come to think of 
the co-ordination and adjustment of these physical 
Forces as part of the mechanism of the heavens 
■ — it is only, in short, when we recognise the 
mental — that is, the anthropopsychic — element,, 
that the Universe becomes glorious and intelli- 
gible, as indeed a Cosmos ; a System of Order 
and Beauty adapted to the various ends which 
we see actually attained, and to a thousand others 
which we can only guess. No philosophy can be 
true which allows that we see in Nature the most 
intimate relations with our intellectual conceptions of 
Space and Time and Force and Numerical Propor- 
tion, but denies that we can ever see any similar 
relation with our conceptions of Purpose and Design, 
or with those still higher conceptions which are em- 
bodied in our sense of Justice and in our love of 
Righteousness, and in our admiration of the "quality 
of Mercy." These elements in the Mind of Man 
are not less certain than others to have some corre- 
lative in the Mind which rules in Nature. Assuredly, 
in the supreme Government of the Universe these 
are not less likely than other parts of our mental 
constitution to have some part of the natural System 
related to them — so related that the knowledge of 
that System shall be at once their interpretation 
and fulfilment. Neither brute Matter nor inanimate 



Mind and Heart Combined alone Adorable. 3 1 1 



Force can supply either the one or the other. If 
there be one truth more certain than another, one 
conclusion more securely founded than another, not 
on Reason only, but on every other Faculty of our 
nature, it is this — that there is nothing but Mind 
that we can respect ; nothing but Heart that we can 
love ; nothing but a perfect combination of the two 
that we can adore. 

And yet it cannot be denied that among the 
many difficulties and the many mysteries by which 
we are surrounded, perhaps the greatest of all diffi- 
culties- and the deepest of all mysteries concerns 
the limits within which we can, and beyond which 
we cannot, suppose that we bear the image of Him 
who is the source of Life. It seems as if, on either 
side, our thoughts are in danger of doine some 
affront to the Majesty of Heaven — on the one hand, 
if we suppose the Creator to have made us with an 
intense desire to know Him, but yet destitute of any 
faculties capable of forming even the faintest con- 
ception of His nature ; on the other hand, if we 
suppose that creatures such as (only too well) we 
know ourselves to be, can image the High and the 
Holy One who inhabiteth Eternity. Both these 
aspects of the truth are vividly represented in the 
language of the great Prophets of Humanity who 
" at sundry times and in divers manners " have 
spoken most powerfully to the world upon Divine 



312 



The Unity of Nature, 



things. On the one hand we have such strong 
but simple images as those which represent the 
Almighty as u walking in the garden in the cool of 
the day," or as speaking to the Jewish lawgiver 
" face to face, as a man speaketh with his friend ; " 
on the other hand we have the solemn and emphatic 
declaration of St. John that " no man hath seen 
God at any time." In the sublime poetry of Job 
we have at once the most touching and almost 
despairing complaints of the inaccessibility and in- 
scrutability of God, and also the most absolute con- 
fidence in such a knowledge of His character as to 
support and justify unbounded trust. In the Psalms 
we have these words addressed to the wicked as 
conveying the most severe of all rebukes, " Thou 
thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as 
thyself." 

And perhaps this word " altogether " indicates 
better than any other the true reconciliation of 
apparent contradictions. In the far higher light 
which Christianity claims to have thrown on the 
relations of Man to God, the same solution is in 
clearer terms presented to us. " Knowing in part 
and prophesying in part," " Seeing through a glass 
darkly," and many other forms of expression, imply 
at once the reality and yet the partial character 
•of the truths which on these high matters our 
faculties enable us to attain. And this idea is not 



A n Image of the Divine, not a Measure, 3 1 3 



only consistent, but is inseparably connected with 
that Sense of Limitation which we have already 
seen to be one of the most remarkable and signi- 
ficant facts connected with our mental constitution. 
There is not one of the higher powers of our mind 
in respect of which we do not feel that we are tied 
and bound by the weight of our infirmities. There- 
fore we can have no difficulty in conceiving all 
our own powers exalted to an indefinite degree. 
And thus it is that although all Goodness, and 
Power, and Knowledge must, in respect to quality, 
be conceived of as we know them in ourselves, it 
does not follow that they can only be conceived of 
according to the measure which we ourselves supply. 

These considerations show — first, that as the 
human Mind is the highest created thing of which 
we have any knowledge, its conceptions of what 
is greatest in the highest degree must be founded 
on what it knows to be the greatest and highest 
in itself ; and, secondly, that we have no difficulty 
in understanding how this image of the Highest 
may, and must be, faint — without being at all un- 
real or untrue. 

There are, moreover, as we have seen, some 
remarkable features connected with our conscious- 
ness of limitation pointing to the conclusion that 
we have faculties enabling us to recognise certain 
truths when they are presented to us, which we 



3H 



The Unity of Nature. 



could never have discovered for ourselves. The 
sense of mystery which is sometimes so oppres- 
sive to us, and which is never more oppressive 
than when we try to fathom and understand some 
of the commonest questions affecting our own life 
and nature, suggests and confirms this represen- 
tation of the facts. For this sense of oppression 
can only arise from some Organs of mental vision 
watching for a light which they have been formed 
to see, but from which our own investigations 
cannot lift the veil. If that veil is to be lifted at 
all, the evidence is that it must be lifted for us. 
Physical science does not even tend to solve any 
one of the ultimate questions which it concerns 
us most to know, and which it interests us most 
to ask. It is according to the analogy and course 
of Nature that to these questions there should be 
some answering voice, and that it should tell us 
things such as we are able in some measure to 
understand. Nor ought it to be a thing incredible 
to us — or even difficult to believe — that the system 
disclosed should be in a sense anthropopsychic — 
that is to say, that it should bear some very near 
relation to our own forms of thought- — to our own 
faculties of Mind, and Soul, and Spirit. For all we 
do know, and all the processes of thought by which 
knowledge is acquired, involve and imply the truth' 
that our Mind is indeed made in some real sense. 



Moral Unworthiness a New Element. 315 



in the image of the Creator, although intellectually 
its powers are very limited, and morally its condi- 
tion is very low. 

In this last element of consciousness, however — 
not the limitation of our intellectual powers, but 
the unworthiness of our moral character — we come 
upon a fact differing from any other which we have 
hitherto considered. It is not so easy to assign to 
it any consistent place in the Unities of Nature. 
What it is and what it appears to indicate, must 
form the subject of another chapter. 



\ 



CHAPTER IX. 

On the Moral Character of Man. 

^PHE Consciousness of Un worthiness in respect 
to moral character is a fact as fundamental 
and as universal in the human mind as the Con- 
sciousness of Limitation in respect to intellectual 
power. Both of them may exist in a form so 
rudimentary as to be hardly recognisable. The 
limits of our Intelligence may be felt only in a dim 
sense of unsatisfied curiosity. The faultiness of 
our character may be recognised only in the 
vaguest emotions of occasional self-reproach. But 
as the knowledge of Mankind extends, and as the 
cultivation of their moral faculties improves, both 
these great elements of consciousness become 
more and more prominent, and occupy a larger 
and larger place in the horizon of their thoughts. 
It is always the men who know most who feel 



Impulse and Power Equal to Exigency. 317 



most how limited their knowledge is. And so 
likewise it is always the loftiest spirits who are 
most conscious of the infirmities which beset them. 
But although these two great facts in human 

o o 

consciousness are parallel facts, there is a profound 
difference between them ; and to the nature and 
bearing of this difference very careful attention 
must be paid. 

We have seen in regard to all living things 
what the relation is between the physical powers 
which they possess and the ability which they 
have to use them. It is a relation of close and 
perfect correspondence. Everything requisite to 
be done for the unfolding and upholding of their 
life they have impulses universally disposing them 
to do, and faculties fully enabling them to accom- 
plish. We have seen that in the case of some 
animals this correspondence is already perfect 
from the infancy of the creature, and that even 
in the case of those which are born comparatively 
helpless, there is always given to them just so 
much of impulse and of power as is requisite for 
the attainment of their own maturity. It may be 
nothing more than the mere impulse and power 
of opening the mouth for food, as in the case of 
the chicks of many Birds ; or it may be the much 
more active impulse and the much more com- 
plicated power by which the young Mammalia 



3i8 



The Unity of Nature. 



seek and secure their nourishment ; or it may be 
such wonderful special instincts as that by which 
the newly hatched Cuckoo, although blind and 
otherwise helpless, is yet enabled to expel its 
rivals from the nest, and thus secure that un- 
divided supply of food without which it could not 
survive. But whatever the impulse or the power 
may be, it is always just enough for the work 
which is to be done. We have seen, too, that 
the amount of prevision which is involved in those 
instinctive dispositions and actions of animals is 
often greatest in those which are low in the scale 
of life, so that the results for which they work, 
and which they do actually attain, must be com- 
pletely out of sight to them. In the wonderful 
metamorphoses of Insect Life, the imperfect creature 
is guided with certainty to the choice and enjoy- 
ment of the conditions which are necessary to its 
own development ; and when the time comes it 
selects the position, and constructs a cell in 
which its own mysterious .transformations are ac- 
complished 

All this is in conformity with an absolute and 
universal Law in virtue of which there is established 
a perfect unity between these three things : — first, 
the physical powers and structure of all living 
creatures ; secondly, those dispositions and instinc- 
tive appetites which are seated in that structure 



The Meaning of Man s Sense of Ignorance. 319 

to impel and guide its powers ; and thirdly, the 
external conditions in which the creature's life is 
passed, and in which its faculties find an appro- 
priate field of exercise. 

If Man has any place in the Unity of Nature, 
this law must prevail with him. There must be 
the same correspondence between his powers and 
the instincts which incite and direct him in their use. 
Accordingly it is in this law that we find the expla- 
nation and the meaning of his Sense of Ignorance. 
For without a sense of ignorance there could be 
no desire of knowledge, and without his desire 
of knowledge Man would not be Man. His whole 
place in Nature depends upon it. His curiosity, 
and his wonder, and his admiration, and his awe — 
these are all but the adjuncts and subsidiary allies 
of that supreme affection which incites him to 
inquire and know. Nor is this desire capable of 
being resolved into his tendency to seek for an 
increased command over the comforts and conve- 
niences of life. It is wholly independent of that 
kind of value which consists in the physical utility 
of things. The application of knowledge comes 
after the acquisition of it, and is not the only, or 
•even the most powerful, inducement to its pursuit. 
The real incitement is an innate appetite of the 
* Mind— conscious in various degrees of the mystery, 
and of the beauty, and of the majesty of the System in 



320 



The Unity of Nature. 



which it lives and moves ; conscious, too, that its 
own relations to that System are but dimly seen 
and very imperfectly understood. In a former 
chapter we have seen that this appetite of know- 
ledge is never satisfied, even by the highest and 
most successful exertion of those faculties which 
are, nevertheless, our only instruments of research. 
We have seen, too, what is the meaning and 
significance of that great Reserve of Power which 
must exist within us, seeing that it remains un- 
exhausted and inexhaustible by the proudest suc- 
cesses of discovery. In this sense it is literally 
true that the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor 
the ear filled with hearing. Every new advance 
has its new horizon. Every answered question 
brings into view another question unanswered, and 
perhaps unanswerable, lying close behind it. And 
I so we come to see that this Sense of Ignorance 
, is not only part of our nature, but one of its 
highest parts — necessary to its development, and 
indicative of those unknown and indefinite pro- 
spects of attainment which are at once the glory 
and the burden of Humanity. \ 

It is impossible to mistake, then, the place which 
is occupied among the Unities of Nature by that 
Sense of Ignorance which is universal among men. 
It belongs to the number of those primary mental 
conditions which impel all living things to do that 



Mans Sense of Ignorance. 321 



which it is their special work to do, and in the 
doing of which the highest law of their Being is ful- 
filled. In the case of the lower animals, this law, as 
to the part they have to play and the ends they 
have to serve in the economy of the world, is 
simple, definite, and always . perfectly attained. No 
advance is with them possible, no capacity of im- 
provement, no dormant or undeveloped powers 
leading up to wider and wider spheres of action. 
With Man, on the contrary, the law of his Being is 
a law which demands progress, which endows him 
with faculties enabling him to make it, and fills 
him with aspirations which cause him to desire it. 
Among the lowest Savages there is some curiosity 
and some sense of wonder, else even the rude in- 
ventions they have achieved would never have 
been made, and their degraded superstitions would 
not have kept their hold. Man's Sense of Ignorance 
is one of the greatest of his gifts, for it is the secret 
of his wish to know. The whole structure and the 
whole furniture of his Mind is adapted to this con- 
dition. The highest law of his Being is to advance 
in wisdom and knowledge : and his sense of the 
Presence and of the Power of things which he can 
only partially understand, is an abiding witness of 
this law, and an abiding incentive to its fulfilment. 
In all these aspects there is an absolute contrast 

between our Sense of Limitation in respect to intel- 

x 



The Unity of Nature. 



lectual power (or knowledge) and our Sense of Un- 
worthiness in respect to moral character. It is not 
of ignorance, but of knowledge, that we are con- 
scious here, — even the knowledge of the distinction 
between Good and Evil, and of that special Sense which 
in our nature is associated with it, namely, the Sense 
of moral Obligation. Now it is a universal fact of 
consciousness as regards ourselves, and of observa- 
tion in regard to others, that, knowing evil to be 
evil, men are nevertheless prone to do it, and that, 
having this sense of moral Obligation, they are 
nevertheless prone to disobey it. This fact is 
entirely independent of the particular standard by 
which men in different stages of society have 
judged certain things to be good and other things 
to be evil. It is entirely independent of the infinite 
variety of rules according to which they recognise 
the doing of particular acts, and the abstention from 
other acts, to be obligatory upon them. Under 
every variety of circumstance in regard to these 
rules, under every diversity of Custom, of Law, or of 
Religion by which they are established, the general 
fact remains the same — that what men themselves 
recognise as duty they continually disobey, and 
what according to their own standard they acknow- 
ledge to be wrong they continually do. 

There is unquestionably much difficulty in finding 
any place for this fact among the Unities of Nature. 



The Sense of Obligation Primary and Simple. 323 



It falls therefore in the way of this inquiry to 
investigate how this difficulty arises, and wherein it 
consists. 

And here we at once encounter those old funda- 
mental questions on the nature, the origin, and the 
authority of the Moral Sense which have exercised 
the human mind for more than two thousand years ; 
and on which an eminent writer of our own time 
has said that no sensible progress has been made. 
This result may well suggest that the direction 
which inquiry has taken is a direction in which pro- 
gress is impossible. If men will try to analyse 
something which is incapable of analysis, a perpetual 
consciousness of abortive effort will be their only 
and their inevitable reward. 

For just as in the physical world there are bodies 
or substances which are (to us) elementary, so in 
the spiritual world there are perceptions, feelings, or 
emotions, which are equally elementary — that is to 
say, which resist all attempts to resolve them into a 
combination of other and simpler affections of the 
mind. And of this kind is the idea, or the concep- 
tion, or the sentiment of Obligation. That which 
we mean when we say, " I ought," is a meaning 
which is incapable of reduction. It is a meaning 
which enters as an element into many other concep- 
tions, and into the import of many other forms of 
■expression, but it is itself uncompounded. AD 



324 The Unity of Nature. 

attempts to explain it do one or other of these two 

things — either they assume and include the idea of 

Obligation in the very circumlocutions by which 

they profess to explain its origin ; or else they build 

up a structure which, when completed, remains as 

destitute of the idea of Obligation as the separate 

materials of which it is composed. In the one case,. 

they first put in the gold, and then they think that by 

some alchemy they have made it ; in the other case, 

they do not indeed first put in the gold, but neither 

in the end do they ever get it. No combination of 

other things will give the idea of Obligation, unless 

with and anions these things there is some con- 
es & 

cealed or unconscious admission of itself. But in 
this, as in other cases with which we have already 
dealt, the ambiguities of language afford an easy 
means or an abundant source of self-deception. 
One common phrase is enough to serve the purpose 
— the " Association of Ideas." Under this vague 
and indefinite form of words all mental operations 
and all mental affections may be classed. Con- 
sequently those which are elementary may be 
included, without being expressly named. This is 
one way of putting in the gold and then of pretend- 
ing to find it as a result. Take one of the simplest 
cases in which the idea of Obligation arises, even 
in the rudest minds— namely, the case of gratitude 
to those who have done us good. Beyond all 



The Theory of Association. 325 

question, this simple form of the Sense of Obligation 
is one which involves the association of many ideas. 
It involves the idea of Self as a moral agent and 
the recipient of good. It involves the idea of 
other human beings as likewise moral agents, and 
as related to us by a common nature, as well as, 
perhaps, by still more special ties. It involves the 
idea of things good for them, and of our having 
power to confer these things upon them. All these 
ideas are " associated " in the sense of gratitude 
towards those who have conferred upon us any 
kind of favour. But the mere word "association " 
throws no light whatever upon the nature of the 
connection. " Association " means nothing but 
grouping or contiguity of any kind. It may be 
the grouping of mere accident — the associations 
of things which happen to lie together, but which 
have no other likeness, relation, or connection. 
But this, obviously, is not the kind of association 
which connects together the different ideas which 
are involved in the conception of gratitude to 
those who have done us good. What then is 
the associating tie ? What is the link which binds 
them together, and constitutes the particular kind 
or principle of association ? It is the Sense of 
Obligation. The associating or grouping power lies 
in this Sense. It is the centre round which the 
other perceptions aggregate. It is the seat of that 



326 



The Unity of Nature, 



force which holds them together, which keeps them 
in a definite and fixed relation, and gives its mental 
character to the combination as a whole. 

If we examine closely the language of those who 
have attempted to analyse the Moral Sense, or, 
in other words, the Sense of Obligation, we shall 
always detect the same fallacy— namely, the use of 
words so vague that under cover of them the idea 
of Obligation is assumed as the explanation of 
itself. Sometimes this fallacy is so transparent 
in the very forms of expression which are used, 
that we wonder how men of even ordinary intelli- 
gence, far more men of the highest intellectual 
power, can have failed to see and feel the con- 
fusion of their thoughts. Thus, for example, we 
find Mr. Grote expressing himself as follows : — 
; " This idea of the judgment of others upon our 
conduct and feeling as agents, or the idea of our 
own judgment as spectators in concurrence with 
others upon our own conduct as agents, is the 
main basis of what is properly called Ethical 
sentiment."** In this passage the word ''judg- 
ment" can only mean moral judgment, which is 
an exercise of the Moral Sense ; and this exercise 
is gravely represented as the " basis " of itself. 

Two things, however, ought to be carefully 
considered and remembered in respect to this ele- 

*' Fragments on Ethical Subjects, pp."9, 10. 



The Moral Sense in itself Elementary. 327 

mentary character of the Moral Sense. The first 
is, that we must clearly define to ourselves what 
the idea is of which, and of which alone, we can 
afrirm that it is elementary ; and secondly, that we 
must define to ourselves as clearly, if it be possible 
to do so, in what sense it is that any Faculty what- 
ever of the Mind can really be contemplated as 
separable from, or as uncombined with, others. 

As regards the first of these two things to be 
defined, namely, the idea which we affirm to be 
simple or elementary, it must be clearly understood 
that this elementary character, this incapability of 
being reduced by analysis, belongs to the bare 
sense or feeling of Obligation, and not at all, or 
not generally, to the processes of thought by which 
that feeling may be guided in its exercise. This 
distinction is immense and obvious. The Sense 
of right and of wrong is one thing ; the way in 
which we come to attach the idea of right 
or wrong to the doing of certain acts, or to the 
abstention from certain other acts, is another and 
a very different thing. This is a distinction which 
applies equally to many other simple or elemen- 
tary affections of the Mind. The liking or dislik- 
ing of certain tastes or affections of the palate 
is universal and elementary. But the particular 
tastes which are the objects of liking or of aversion 
are for the most part determined by habits and 



328 The Unity of Nature. 



education. There may be tastes which all men 
are so constituted as necessarily to feel disgusting ; 
and in like manner there may be certain acts 
which all men everywhere must feel to be con- 
trary to their Sense of Obligation. Indeed we 
shall see good reason to believe that this not 
only may be so, but must be so. But this is 
a separate subject of inquiry. The distinction in 
principle is manifest between the Sense itself and 
the laws by which its particular applications are 
determined. 

The second of the two things to be defined — 
namely, the sense in which any Faculty whatever of 
the Mind can really be regarded singly, or as 
uncombined with others — is a matter so important 
that we must stop to consider it with greater care. 

The analogy is not complete, but only partial, 
between the analysis of Mind and the analysis of 
Matter. In the analysis of Matter we reach ele- 
ments which can be wholly separated from each 
other, so that each of them can exist and can be 
handled by itself. In the analysis of Mind we are 
dealing with one Organic Whole ; and the operation 
by which we break it up into separate faculties or 
powers is an operation purely ideal, since there is 
>not one of these faculties which can exist alone, or 
which can exert its special functions without the 
help of others. When we speak, therefore, of a 



Mental Elements not Absolutely Separable. 329 



Moral Sense or of Conscience, we do not speak of it 
as a separate entity any more than when we speak 
of Reason or of Imagination. Strictly speaking, 
no Faculty of the Mind is elementary in the same 
sense in which the elements of Matter are (supposed 
to be) absolutely simple or uncombined. Perhaps 
there is no Faculty of the Mind which presents itself 
so distinctly and is so easily separable from others 
as the Faculty of Memory. And yet Memory can- 
not always reproduce its treasures without an effort 
of the Will, nor, sometimes, without many artificial 
expedients of Reason to help it in retracing the old 
familiar lines. Neither is there any Faculty more 
absolutely necessary than Memory to the working of 
every other. Without [Memory there could not be 
any Reason, nor any Reflection, nor any Conscience. 
In this respect all the higher Faculties of the human 
Mind are much more inseparably blended and united 
in their operation than those lower Faculties which 
are connected with bodily sensation. These lower 
Faculties are indeed also parts of one Whole, are 
connected with a common centre, and can all be 
paralysed when that centre is affected. But in 
their ordinary activities their spheres of action seem 
widely different, and each of them can be, and often 
is, seen in apparently solitary and independent 
action. Sight and taste and touch and hearing are 
all very different from each other — so separate 



33° 



The Unity of Naturt 



indeed that the language of the one can hardly be 
translated into the language of the other. 

But when from these lower Faculties, which are 
connected with separate and visible Organs of the 
Body, and which we possess in common with 
the Brutes, we ascend to the great central group 
of higher and more spiritual Faculties which are 
peculiar to Man, we soon find that their unity is 
more absolute, and their interdependence more 
visibly complete. Ideally we can distinguish them, 
and we can range them in an ascending order. 
We can separate between different elements and 
different processes of thought, and in accordance 
with these distinctions we can assign to each of 
them a separate Faculty of the Mind. We think of 
these separate Faculties as being each specially 
apprehensive of one kind of idea, or specially con- 
ducting one kind of operation. Thus the reasoning 
Faculty works out the process of logical sequence, 
and apprehends one truth as the necessary conse- 
quence of another. Thus the Faculty of Reflection 
passes in review the previous apprehensions of the 
Intellect, or the fleeting suggestions of Memory and 
of Desire, looks at them in different aspects, and 
submits them now to the tests of reasoning, and 
now to the appreciations of the Moral Sense. Thus, 
again, the supreme Faculty of Will determines the 
subject of investigation, or the direction of thought, 



No Mental Facility Independent of Others. 331 



or the course of conduct. But although all these 
Faculties may be, and indeed must sometimes be, 
conceived and regarded as separate, they all more 
or less involve each other ; and in the great 
hierarchy of powers, the highest and noblest seem 
always to be built upon the foundations of those 
which stand below. Memory is the indispensable 
servant of them all. Reflection is ever turning the 
Mind inward on itself. The logical Faculty is ever 
rushing to its own conclusions as necessary con- 
sequences of the elementary axioms from which it 
starts, and which are to it the objects of direct and 
intuitive apprehension. The Moral Sense is ever 
passing its judgments upon the conduct of others 
and of ourselves ; whilst the Will is ever present to 
set each and all to their proper work. And the 
proper work of every Faculty is to see some special 
kind of relation or some special quality in things 
which other Faculties have not been formed to see. 
But although these qualities in things are in them- 
selves separate and distinct, it does not at all follow 
that the separate Organs of the Mind, by which they 
are severally apprehended, can ever work without 
each other's help. The sense of logical necessity 
is clearly different from the sense of moral Obliga- 
tion. But yet as Reason cannot work without the 
help of Memory, so neither can the Moral Sense 
work without the help of Reason. And the 



33 2 



The Unity of Nature. 



elements which Reason has to work on in present- 
ing different actions to the judgment of the Moral 
Sense, may be, and often are, of very great variety- 
It is these elements, many and various in their 
character, and contributed through the help and 
concurrence of many different Faculties of the Mind, 
that men are really distinguishing and dissecting 
when- they think they are analysing the Moral 
Sense itself. What they do analyse with more or 
less success is not the Moral Sense, but the condi- 
tions under which that Sense comes to attach its 
special judgments of approval or of condemnation 
to particular acts or to particular motives. 

And this analysis of the conditions under which 
the Moral Sense performs its work, although it is 
not the kind of analysis which it often pretends to 
be, is nevertheless in the highest degree important, 
for although the Sense of Obligation, or, as it is 
usually called, the Moral Sense, may be in itself 
simple, elementary, and incapable of reduction, it 
is quite possible to reach conclusions of the most 
vital interest concerning its nature and its functions 
by examining the circumstances which do actually 
determine its exercise, especially those circumstances 
which are necessary and universal facts in the ex- 
perience of Mankind. 

There is, in the first place, one question respect- 
ing the Moral Sense which meets us at the thres- 



The Moral Sense Respects Conduct only. 333 



hold of every inquiry respecting it, and to which 

a clear and definite answer can be given. This 
question is — What is the subject-matter of the 
Moral Sense ? or, in other words, what is the kind 
of thing of which alone it takes any cognisance, and 
in which alone it recognises the qualities of right 
and wrong ? 

To this fundamental question one answer, and one 
answer only, can be given. The things, and the 
only things, of which the Moral Sense takes cog- 
nisance are the actions of Man. It can take no 
cognisance of the actions of machines, nor of the 
actions of the inanimate Forces of Nature, nor of the 
actions of Beasts, except in so far as a few of these 
may be supposed to possess in a low and elementary 
degree some of the characteristic powers of Man. 
Human conduct is the only subject-matter in respect 
of which the perceptions of the Moral Sense arise. 
They are perceptions of the Mind which have no 
relation to anything whatever except to the activities 
of another Mind constituted like itself. For, as no 
moral judgment can be formed, and no moral per- 
ception can be felt, except by a moral agent, so 
neither can it be formed in respect to the conduct 
of any other agent which has not, or is not assumed 
to have, a nature like our own — moral, rational, 
and free. 

And this last condition — freedom — which is an 



334 



The Unity of Nature, 



essential one to the very idea of an Agency having 
any moral character, will carry us a long way on 
towards a farther definition of the subject-matter on 
which the Moral Sense is exercised. It is, as we 
have seen, human conduct. But it is not human 
conduct in its mere outward manifestations, for the 
only moral element in human conduct is its actuating 
motive. If any human action is determined not 
by any motive whatever, but simply by external 
or physical compulsion, then no moral element is 
present at all, and no perception of the Moral Sense 
can arise respecting it. Freedom, therefore, in the 
sense of exemption from such compulsion, must be 
assumed as a condition of human action absolutely 
essential to its possessing any moral character what- 
ever. There can be no moral character in any 
action, so far as the individual actor is concerned, 
apart from the meaning and intention of the actor. 
The. very same deed may be good, or, on the con- 
trary, devilishly bad, according to the inspiring 
motive of him who does it. The giving of a cup of 
cold water to assuage suffering, and the giving it to 
prolong life in order that greater suffering may be 
endured, are the same outward deeds, but are ex- 
actly opposite in moral character. In like manner, 
the killing of a man in battle, and the killing of a 
man for robbery or revenge, are the same actions, 
but the one may be often right, whilst the other 



The Moral Element is in Actuating Motive. 335 



must be always wrong, because of the different 
motives which incite the deed. 

Illustrations of the same General truth might be 
given as infinite in variety as the varying circum- 
stances and conditions of human conduct. It is a 
truth perfectly consistent with the doctrine of an In- 
dependent Morality. Every action of a voluntary 
agent has, and must have, its own moral character, 
and yet this character may be separate and apart from 
its relation to the responsibility of the individual man 
who does it. That is to say, every act must be either 
permitted, or forbidden, or enjoined, by legitimate 
Authority, although the man who does it may be 
ignorant of the Authority or of its commands. And 
the same proposition holds good if we look upon the 
ultimate standard of morality from the Utilitarian 
point of view. Every act must have its own rela- 
tion to the future. Every act must be either 
innocent, or beneficent, or hurtful in its ultimate 
tendencies and results. Or, if we like to put it in 
another form, every act must be according to the 
harmony of Nature or at variance with that har- 
mony, and therefore an element of disorder and 
disturbance. In all these senses, therefore, we 
speak, and we are right in speaking, of actions as 
in themselves good or bad, because we so speak of 
them according to our own knowledge of the rela- 
tion in which they stand to those great axioms 



The Unity of Nature. 



of morality, which are facts, and not mere assump- 
tions or even mere beliefs. But we are quite able 
to separate this judgment of the act from the judg- 
ment which can justly be applied to the individual 
agent. As regards him, the act is right or wrong, 
not according to our knowledge, but according to 
his own. And this great distinction is universally 
recognised in the language and (however uncon- 
sciously) in the thoughts of men. It is sanctioned, 
moreover, by Supreme Authority. The most solemn 
prayer ever uttered upon Earth was a prayer for the 
forgiveness of an act of the most enormous wicked- 
ness, and the ground of the petition was specially 
declared to be that those who committed it " knew 
not what they did." The same principle which avails 
to diminish blame, avails also to diminish or to ex- 
tinguish merit. We may justly say of many actions 
that they are good in themselves, assuming, as we 
naturallv do, that those who do such actions do them 
under the influence of the appropriate motive. But if 
this assumption fails in any particular case, we cannot 
and we do not credit the actor with the eoodness of 
his deed. If he has done a thing which in itself is 
good in order to compass an evil end, then, so far 
as he is concerned, the deed is not good, but bad. 
It may indeed be worse in moral character than 
many other kinds of evil deeds, and this just be- 
cause of the goodness usually attaching to it. For 



Deeds of Cruelty Done from Good Motives. 337 



this goodness may very probably involve the double 
guilt of some special treachery, or some special 
hypocrisy ; and both treachery and hypocrisy are 
in the highest degree immoral. It is clear that no 
action, however apparently benevolent, if done from 
some selfish or cruel motive, can be a good or a 
moral action. 

It may seem, however, as if the converse of this 
proposition cannot be laid down as broadly and as 
decidedly. There are deeds of cruelty in abun- 
dance which have been done, ostensibly at least, and 
sometimes, perhaps, really, from motives compara- 
tively good, and yet from which an enlightened 
Moral Sense can never detach the character of 
wickedness and wrong. These may seem to be 
cases in which the motive does not determine the 
moral character of the action, and in which our 
Moral Sense persists in condemning the thing done 
in spite of the motive. But if we examine closely 
the grounds on which we pass judgment in such 
cases, we shall not, I think, find them exceptions to 
the rule or law that the purpose or intention of a 
free and voluntary agent is the only thing in which 
any moral goodness can exist, or to which any moral 
judgment can be applied. In the first place, we 
may justly think that the actors in such deeds are 
to a large extent themselves responsible for the 
failure in knowledge, and for the defective Moral 



33« 



The Unity of Nature. 



Sense which blind them to the evil of their conduct, 
and which lead them to a wrong application of some 
motive which may in itself be good. And in the 
second place, Ave may have a just misgiving as to 
the singleness and purity of the alleged purpose 
which is good. We know that the motives of men 
are so various and so mixed, that they are not 
always themselves conscious of that motive which 
really prevails, and we may have often good reasons 
for our convictions that bad motives unavowed 
have really determined conduct for which good 
motives only have been alleged. Thus, in the case 
of religious persecution, we may be sure that the 
lust of power, and the passion of resentment against 
those who resist its ungovernable desires, have 
very often been the impelling motive, where nothing 
but the love of truth has been acknowledged. And 
this at least may be said, that in the universal 
judgment of Mankind, actions which they regard 
as wrong - have not the whole of that wrongfulness 
charged against the doers of them, in proportion 
as we really believe the agents to have been guided 
purely and honestly by their own sense of Moral 
Obligation. 

On the whole, then, we can determine or define 
with great clearness and precision the field within 
which the Moral Sense can alone find the possi- 
bilities of exercise, — and that field is the conduct of 



The Central Question of all Ethical Inquiry. 339 



men ; — by which is meant not their actions only, 
but the purpose, motive, or intention by which the 
doing of these actions is determined. This con- 
clusion, resting on the firm ground of observation 
and experience, is truthfully expressed in the well- 
known lines of Burns : — - 

" The heart's aye the part aye 
Which makes us right or wrang." 

And now it is possible to approach more closely to 
the great central question of all ethical inquiry : — 
Are there any motives which all men under all 
circumstances recognise as good ? Are there any 
other motives which, on the contrary, all men under 
all circumstances recognise as evil ? Are there any 
fundamental perceptions of the Moral Sense upon 
which the standard of right and wrong is planted 
at the first, and round which it gathers to itself, 
by the help of every Faculty through which the 
Mind can work, higher and higher conceptions of 
the course of duty ? 

In dealing with this question, it is a comfort to 
remember that we are in possession of analogies 
deeply seated in the constitution and in the course 
of Nature. It is quite possible to assign to Intuition 
or to Instinct the place and rank which really 
belongs to it, and to assign also to what is called 
Experience the functions which are unquestionably 
its own. There is no Sense or Faculty of the Mind 



340 



The Unity of Natun 



which does not gain by education — not one which 
is independent of those processes of development 
which result from its contact with the external 
world. But neither is there any Sense or Faculty 
of the Mind which starts unfurnished with some 
one or more of those intuitive perceptions with 
which all education and all development must 
begin. Just as every exercise of Reason must be 
founded on certain axioms which are self-evident 
to the logical Faculty, so all other exercises of the 
Mind must start from the direct perception of 
some rudimentary truths. It would be strange 
indeed if the moral Faculty were any exception to 
this fundamental law. This Faculty in its higher 
conditions, such as we see it in the best men in 
the most highly civilised communities, may stand 
at an incalculable distance from its earliest and 
simplest condition, and still more from its lowest 
condition, such as we see it in the most degraded 
races of Mankind. But this distance has been 
reached from some starting-point, and at that 
starting-point there must have been some simple 
acts or dispositions to which the sense of Obliga- 
tion was instinctively attached. And beyond all 
question this is the fact. All men do instinctively 
know what gives pleasure to themselves, and there- 
fore also what gives pleasure to other men. More- 
over, to a very large extent, the things which give 



Moral Sense Necessary to Hitman Development. 341 



them pleasure are the real needs of life, and the 
acquisition or enjoyment of these is not only useful 
but essential to the well-being or even to the very 
existence of the race. And as Man is a social animal 
by nature, with social instincts at least as innate as 
those of the Ant or the Beaver or the Bee, we 
may be sure that there were and are born with him 
all those intuitive perceptions and desires which are 
necessary to the growth and unfolding of his powers. 

And this we know to be the fact, not only as 
a doctrine founded on the unities of Nature, but 
as a matter of universal observation and experi- 
ence. We know that without the Moral Sense 
Man could not fulfil the part which belongs to him 
in the world. It is as necessary in the earliest 
stages of the Family and of the Tribe, as it is in 
the latest developments of the State and of the 
Church. It is an element without which nothing 
can be done — without which no man could trust 
another, and, indeed, no man could trust himself. 
There is no bond of union among men — even the 
lowest and the worst — which does not involve and 
depend upon the Sense of Obligation. There is no 
kind of brotherhood or association for any purpose 
which could stand without it. As a matter of fact, 
therefore, and not at all as a matter of speculation, 
we know that the Moral Sense holds a high place 
as one of the necessary conditions in the develop- 



342 



The Unity of Nature. 



ment of Man's nature, in the improvement of his 
condition, and in the attainment of that place which 
may yet lie before him in the future of the world. 

There are other sentiments and desires which, 
being as needful, are equally instinctive. Thus, 
the desire of communicating pleasure to others is 
one of the instincts which is as universal in Man as 
the desire of communicating knowledge. Both are 
indeed branches of the same stem — offshoots from 
the same root. The acquisition of knowledge, to 
which we are stimulated by the instinctive affec- 
tions of curiosity and of wonder, is one of the 
greatest of human pleasures, and the desire we 
have to communicate our knowledge to others is 
the great motive-force on which its progress and 
accumulation depend. The pleasure which all men 
take, when their dispositions are good, in sharing 
with others their own enjoyments, is another feature 
quite as marked and quite as innate in the character 
of Man. And if there is any course of action to 
which we do instinctively attach the sentiment of 
moral approbation, it is that course of action which 
assumes that our own desires, and our own estimates 
of good, are the standard by which we ought to 
judge of what is due to, and is desired by others. 
The social instincts of our nature must, therefore, 
naturally and intuitively indicate benevolence as 
a virtuous, and malevolence as a vicious disposition ; 



The Common Element in all Moral Judgment. 343 



and, again, our knowledge of what is benevolent and 
of what is malevolent is involved in our own instinc- 
tive sense of what to us is good, and of what to us 
is evil. It is quite true that this sense may be com- 
paratively low or high, and consequently that the 
standard of obligation which is founded upon it may 
be elementary and nothing more. Those whose own 
desires are few and rude, and those whose estimates 
of good are very limited, must of course form an 
estimate correspondingly poor and scant of what is 
good for, and of what is desired by, others. But 
this exactly corresponds with the facts of human 
nature. This is precisely the variety in unity 
which its phenomena present. There are no men 
of sane mind in whom the Moral Sense does not 
exist ; that is to say, there are no men who do not 
attach to some actions or other the sentiment of 
approval, and to some other actions the opposite 
sentiment of condemnation. On the other hand, 
the selection of the particular actions to which 
these different sentiments are severally attached is 
a selection immensely various ; there being, how- 
ever, this one common element in all, — that the 
course of action to which men do by instinct attach 
the feeling of moral Obligation, is that course of 
action which is animated by the feeling that their 
own desires and their own estimate of good is 
the standard by which they must judge of what is 



344 



The Unity of Nature. 



due by them to others, and by others to them- 
selves. 

And here we stand at the common point of 
departure from which diverge the two great an- 
tagonistic schools of Ethical Philosophy. On the 
one hand, in the intuitive and elementary character 
which we have assigned to the sentiment of Obliga- 
tion, considered in itself, we have the fundamental 
position of that school which asserts an independent 
basis of morality ; whilst, on the other hand, in the 
elementary truths which we have assigned to the 
Moral Sense as its . self-evident apprehensions, we 
have a rule which corresponds, in one aspect at 
least, to the fundamental conception of the Utilita- 
rian school. For the rule which connects the idea 
of Obligation with conduct tending to the good of 
others, as tested by our own estimate of what is 
good for ourselves, is a rule which clearly brings 
the basis of morality into very close connection 
with the practical results of conduct. Accordingly, 
one of the ablest modern advocates of- the Utili- 
tarian system has delared that "in the golden rule 
of Jesus of Nazareth we read the complete spirit 
of the ethics of Utility. To do as you would 
be done by, and to love your neighbour as your- 
self, constitute the ideal perfection of Utilitarian 
morals." * 

* J. S. Mill, " Utilitarianism," pp. 24, 25. 



Utilitarianism and the Golden Rule. 345 



This may well seem a strange and almost a para- 
doxical result to those who have been accustomed 
to consider the Utilitarian theory not so much 
a low standard of morals, as an idea which is 
devoid altogether of that element in which the 
very essence of morality consists. But it is a result 
due to these two causes — first, that under the fire 
of controversy, Utilitarians have been obliged to 
import into the meaning of their words much that 
does not really belong- to them; and secondly, to 
the fact, that when this essential alteration has been 
made, then the theory, or rather the portion of it 
which remains, does represent one very important 
aspect of a very complex truth. 

It will be well to examine a little more closely 
the different ways in which these two causes 
operate. 

In the first place, as regards the ambiguities of 
language, a moment's consideration will convince 
us that the word " utility " has, in its proper and 
primary signification, nothing whatever of the ethi- 
cal meaning which is attached to it in the Utili- 
tarian theory of morals. In its elementary signi- 
fication the useful is simply the serviceable. It is 
curious to observe that this last word has no ethical 
savour about it. On the contrary, it is associated 
rather with the lower than with the higher uses of 
conduct. If this be objected to as preventing the 



34-6 



The Unity of Nature. 



two words from being really the equivalent of each 
other, then at least let it be recognised that utility 
must be divested of its ethical associations before 
it can be set up as an ethical test. If utility is first 
assumed to be the equivalent of goodness, it becomes 
of course a mere play on words to represent useful- 
ness as the criterion of virtue. If we are to conduct 
our analysis correctly, we must expel from utility 
every adventitious element of meaning. The use- 
fulness of a thing means nothing more than its 
conduciveness to some purpose. But it may be 
any purpose, — morally good, or morally bad, or 
morally indifferent. The boot-jack, the thumb- 
screw, and thje rack are all useful machines for the 
purpose of producing torture on the victim, and 
for the purpose, too, of giving to the 'torturers 
that pleasure or satisfaction which wicked men 
find in tyranny or revenge. The words "good" 
and "bad" are themselves often used in a secon- 
dary and derivative sense, which, like " useful," 
may be destitute of any ethical meaning. A 
good thumb-screw would mean an implement well 
adapted to produce the most exquisite pain. A 
good torture may mean a torture well calculated 
to gratify the savage sentiment of revenge. In 
like manner, although not to the same extent, 
the words "right" and "wrong" are often used 
with no ethical element of meaning. The right 



Fallacy in the Use of the Word " Utility' 1 347 



way for a man who wishes to commit suicide 
would be the way to a precipice over which he 
desires to throw himself. But the same way is 
the wrong way for him, if he wishes to avoid the 
danger of falling. In this way we may speak of 
the right way of doing the most wicked things. 

One most eminent expounder of the Utilitarian 
theory has taken advantage of this common use 
of the words "good" and "bad," and of "right" 
and "wrong," to represent utility and inutility to 
be the essential idea of all goodness and of all 
badness respectively.* Thus the unavoidable 
ambiguities of speech are employed to give a 
scientific aspect to the confounding and oblitera- 
tion of the profoundest distinctions which exist 
in knowledge. By the double process of expelling 
from Goodness the idea of virtue, and of inserting 
into Utility the idea of beneficence, the fallacies of 
language become complete. Because subserviency 
to purpose of any kind is the meaning of " good," 
when applied equally to an instrument of torture 
and to an instrument for the relief of suffering, 
therefore, it is argued, the same meaning must be the 
essential one when we speak of a good man. And 
so indeed it may be, if we know or assume before- 
hand what the highest purpose is to which Man 
can be made subservient. There is a well-known 

* Herbert Spencer, " Data of Ethics," chap. iii. 



348 



The Unity of Nature. 



Catechism of one of the Reformed Churches which 
opens with the question, "What is the chief end 
of Man ? " The answer is perhaps one of the 
noblest in the whole compass of Theology. " Man's 
chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for 
ever." * Given certain further beliefs as to the 
character of the Divine Being, and the methods 
of His government, then indeed it would be true 
that this is a conception of the purpose of Mans 
existence which would erect mere serviceableness 
or utility into a perfect rule of conduct. Perhaps 
even a lower or less perfect conception of the great 
aim of Man's life would be almost enough. If virtue 
and beneficence are first assumed to be the highest 
purpose of his Being, then subserviency to that 
purpose may be all that is meant by goodness. 
But, without this assumption as to the " chief 
end of Man," there would be no ethical meaning 
whatever in the phrase of " a good man." It might 
mean a good thief, or a good torturer, or a good 
murderer. Utility, that is to say, mere subserviency 
to any purpose, is undoubtedly a good in itself, and 
of this kind is the goodness of a machine which is 
invented for a bad or evil purpose. But this utility 
in the machine is, so far as the machine is concerned, 
destitute of any moral character whatever, and, so 

#u The Shorter Catechism, presented by the Westminster Assembly 
of Divines to b<5th Houses of Parliament, and by them approved." 



Utility a Test of Fitness, 349 



far as those who employ it are concerned, the utility 
is not virtuous, but, on the contrary, it is vicious. 
It is clear, therefore, that when the word " Utility " is 
used as meaning moral or even physical good, and still 
more when it is identified with virtue, or when it is 
declared to be the standard of that which is right 
or virtuous in conduct, the word is used not in its 
own proper sense, but in a special or adventitious 
sense, in which it is confined to one special kind 
of usefulness, namely, that which conduces to good 
ends, and good aims, and good purposes. That is 
to say, the sense in which utility is spoken of as 
the test or standard of virtue is a sense which 
assumes that goodness and virtue are independently 
known, or in other words, that they are determined 
and recognised by some other test and some other 
standard. 

It is, however^ clear that when by this other test 
and standard, whatever it may be, we have already 
felt or apprehended that it is right and virtuous to 
do good to others, then the usefulness of any action 
or of any course of conduct, in the production of 
such good, does become a real test arid indication of 
that which we ought to do. It is a test or indication 
of the particular things which it is right to do, but 
not at all a test of the moral Obligation which lies 
upon us to do them. This Obligation must be 
assumed, and is assumed, in every argument on the 



The Unity of Nature. 



moral Utility of things. It is by confounding these 
two very distinct ideas that the Utilitarian theory of 
the ultimate basis of moral Obligation has so long 
maintained a precarious existence, borrowing from 
the misuse of words a strength which is not its own. 
But the moment this distinction is clearly appre- 
hended, then, although we set aside the bare idea 
of usefulness, apart from the good or bad purpose 
towards which that usefulness conduces, as afford- 
ing any explanation whatever of the ultimate nature 
and source of duty, we may well, nevertheless, be 
ready to adopt all that the Utilitarian theory can 
show us of that inseparable unity which is estab- 
lished in the constitution of the world between the 
moral character, and the ultimate results, of conduct. 
As far as these results can be traced beforehand, and 
in proportion as they can be traced farther and 
farther in the light of expanding knowledge, they 
do indicate the path of duty. They do indicate 
the line of action which is obligatory on voluntary 
agents, to whom a very large amount of power is 
given in directing the course of things. Beyond 
all doubt there are a thousand acts and a thousand 
courses of conduct which are in accordance with 
the Moral Sense, because and only because of the 
known happiness of their effects. This is the fact, 
or rather the class of facts, which has in all ages 
recommended the Utilitarian theory of morals to so 



Utilitarianism Practically Useless, 351 



many powerful minds. For, indeed, if we under- 
stand by utility, not the low or limited idea of mere 
usefulness for any purpose — not even the mere idea 
of pleasure as an unquestionable good of its own 
kind, nor the mere idea of immediate profit or 
advantage — but the very different conception of the 
beneficence of ultimate results on the welfare of all 
men and of all creatures, then there may be, and 
probably there is, an universal and absolute coinci- 
dence between the things which it is wise, and the 
things which it is right, to do. 

Men may imagine, and they have imagined, that 
under this conception of Utility they can devise a sys- 
tem of morality which is of such transcendental excel- 
lence that it is far too good for Earth. Thus it has 
been laid down that Evolution, in its most perfect con- 
ception, would be such that the development of every 
creature would be compatible with the equal develop- 
ment of every other. In such a system it is said there 
would be no "struggle for existence — no harmful com- 
petition, no mutual devouring — no death." # The 
inspired imaginings of the Jewish Prophets of some 
future time when the Lion shall lie down with the 
Lamb, and the ideas which have clustered round 
the Christian Heaven, are more' probably the real 
origin of this conception than any theory of Evolu- 
tion founded on the facts and laws of Nature. But, 

* Herbert Spencer, "Data of Ethics," chap. ii. pp. 18. 10. 



. i , 

352 The Unity of Nature. 

for all practical purposes, such a system of Ethics is 
as useless as the dreams of Plato's Republic or of 
More's Utopia. If, however, we have got from 
some independent source a right idea of that which 
will be most beneficent in its ultimate results, we 
may well be guided by this light in so far as we can 
see it. But inasmuch as these far-off results and 
tendencies of conduct cannot always be within sight, 
and are indeed very often wholly beyond the horizon 
visible to us, this admission, or rather this high 
doctrine that the Right and the Useful are always 
coincident, is a widely different doctrine from that 
which identifies the sense of Obligation with the 
perception of Utility. The mere perception that 
any act or course of conduct will certainly be bene- 
ficent in its results, would be of no avail without the 
separate feeling that it is right to strive for results 
which are beneficent. 

And here it is well worthy of observation, that in 
direct proportion to the height and sublimity of the 
meaning artificially attached to the word "utility," 
it becomes less and less available as a test or as a 
rule of conduct. So long as the simple and natural 
meaning was put upon utility, and the good was 
identified with the pleasurable, or the serviceable, the 
Utilitarian theory of morals did indicate at least some 
rule of life, however low that rule might be. But now 
that the apostles of that theory have been driven to 
put upon utility a transcendental meaning, and the 



Authority, not Utility, a Guide to us. 353: 



pleasurable is interpreted to refer not merely to the 
immediate and visible effects of conduct on ourselves 
or others, but to its remotest effects upon all living 
Beings, both now and for all future time, the Utili- 
tarian theory in this very process of sublimation 
becomes lifted out of the sphere of human judgment. 
If it be true " that there can be no correct idea of a 
part without a correct idea of the correlative whole," 
and if human conduct in its tendencies and effects is 
only "a part of universal conduct,"*— that is to say, 
of the whole System of the Universe in its past, its 
present, and its future — then, as this whole is beyond 
all our means of knowledge and comprehension, it 
follows that utility, in this sense, can be no guide to 
us. If indeed this System of the Universe has over 
it, or in it, one Supreme Authority, and if we knew 
on that Authority the things which do make, not 
only for our own everlasting peace, but for the per- 
fect accomplishment of the highest purposes of 
Creation to all living things, then indeed the Rule of 
Utility is resolved into .the simple Rule of Obedience 
to legitimate Authority. And this logical result is 
consistent with all we know of the Unity of Nature, 
and with all that we can conceive of the central and 
ultimate Authority on which its Order rests. All 
intuitive perceptions come to us from that Authority. 
All instincts which are the result of Organization. 

* Herbert Spencer, "Data of Ethics," chap. i. pp. 1-6. 

Z 



354 



The Unity of Nature. 



come to us from that Authority. All the data of 
Reason come to us from that Authority. All these 
in their own several spheres of operation may well 
guide us to what is right, and may well give us, too, 
the conviction that what is right is also what is best, 
"at last, far off, at last to all." 

Thus far a clear and consistent answer can be 
given to one of the greatest questions of ethical 
inquiry, namely, the nature of the relation between 
those elements in conduct which make it useful, and 
those elements in conduct which make it virtuous. 
The usefulness of conduct in promoting ends and 
purposes which are good is, in proportion to the 
nature and extent of that good, a test and an index 
of its virtue. But the usefulness of conduct in pro- 
moting ends and purposes which are not good, is 
a mark and index, not of virtue, but of vice. It 
follows from this that utility in itself has no moral 
character whatever apart from the particular aim 
which it tends to accomplish, and that the moral 
goodness of that aim is presupposed when we speak 
or think of the utility of conduct as indicative of its 
virtue. But this character of goodness must be 
matter of independent and instinctive recognition, 
because it is the one distinction between the kind of 
usefulness which is virtuous and the many kinds of 
usefulness which are vicious. Accordingly we find 
in the last resort that our recognition of Goodness 



The Golden Rule not the only Moral Intuition. 355 



in the conduct of other men towards ourselves is 
inseparable from our own consciousness of the needs 
and wants of our own life, and of the tendency of 
that conduct to supply them. This estimate of 
Goodness seated in the very nature of our bodies 
and of our minds becomes necessarily, also, a 
standard of Obligation as regards our conduct to 
others ; for the unity of our nature with that of our 
kind and fellows is a fact seen and felt intuitively 
in the sound of every voice and in the glance of 
every eye around us. 

But this great elementary truth of morals, that 
we ought to do to others as we know we should 
wish them to do to us, is not the only truth which 
is intuitively perceived by the Moral Sense. There 
is, at least, one other among the rudiments of duty 
which is quite as self-evident, quite as important, 
quite as far-reaching in its consequences, and quite 
as early recognised. Obedience to the Will of 
legitimate Authority is necessarily the first of all 
motives with which the sense of Obligation is in- 
separably associated ; whilst its opposite, or rebel- 
lion against the commands of legitimate Authority, 
is the spirit and the motive upon which the Moral 
Sense pronounces its earliest sentence of disapproval 
and of condemnation. At first sight it may seem as 
if the legitimacy of any Authority is a previous ques- 
tion, itself requiring to be determined by the Moral 



oS6 



The Unity of Nahin 



Sense, seeing that it is not until this character of 
legitimacy or rightfulness has been recognised 
as belonging to some particular Authority, that 
obedience to its commands comes in consequence 
to be recognised as wrong. A moment's consi- 
deration, however, will remind us that there is at 
least one Authority the rightfulness of which is 
not a question but a fact. All men are born of 
Parents. All men, moreover, are born in a condi- 
tion of utter helplessness and of absolute depend- 
ence. Moreover, this dependence is not a mere 
external dependence, such, for example, as the 
dependence of a slave upon a master. Still less is 
it like the dependence of us all on the inanimate 
materials of Nature. It is a dependence arising out 
of conditions full to overflowing of all the elements 
to which the sentiment of moral Obligation is neces- 
sarily and intuitively attached. It is the least and 
lowest of these elements that at the breasts of its 
Mother an infant first satisfies its hunger and its 
thirst. Other elements follow in an ascending 
order. In the arms of its Mother it feels the first 
sense of rest, and the first ideas of refuge and of 
protection. In the voice of its Mother it hears the 
first expressions of love, and makes the first re- 
sponses which that love demands. In the smile of 
its Mother it first finds the great gift of laughter. 
In the eyes of its Mother it has its first look into 



Obedience Mans First Idea of Duty. 357 



the mirror of another spirit, and feels the answering 
tides which are stirring within its own. These are 
but a part of the great claim accumulating with the 
hours and days, upon which the authority of a 
Mother rests. And so it comes to pass that the 
rightfulness of that Authority is by the necessities of 
Nature recognised from the first, and when its voice 
is issued in command, the duty of obedience is felt 
and known. As a matter of fact, therefore, and 
not at all as a matter of question or of doubt, our 
first conception of duty, or of moral Obligation, is 
necessarily and universally attached to such acts as 
are in conformity with the injunctions of this first 
and most indisputable of all Authorities. 

Standing, then, on this firm ground of universal 
and necessary experience, we are able to affirm 
with absolute conviction, that our earliest concep- 
tions of duty — our earliest exercises of the Moral 
Sense — are not determined by any considerations 
of utility, or by any conclusions of the judgment on 
the results or on the tendencies of conduct. 

But the same reasoning, founded on the same 
principle of simply investigating and ascertaining 
facts, will carry us a great way farther on. As 
we grow up from infancy, we find that our Parents 
-are themselves also subject to Authority, owing 
and owning the duty of obedience to other per- 
sons or to other powers. This higher Authority 



358 



The Unity of Nature. 



may be nothing but the rules and customs of a 
rude Tribe ; or it may be the Will of an absolute 
Sovereign ; or it may be the accumulated and 
accepted Traditions of a Race ; or it may be the 
Laws of a great civilised Community ; or it may be 
the Authority, still higher, of that Power which is 
known or believed to be supreme in Nature. But 
in all and in each of these cases, the sense of 
Obligation is inseparably attached to obedience to 
some Authority, the legitimacy or rightfulness of 
which is not itself a question but a fact. 

It is true, indeed, that these rightful Authorities, 
which are enthroned in Nature, are fortified by 
power to enforce their commands, and to punish 
violations of the duty of obedience. It is true, 
therefore, that from the first moments of our exist- 
ence the sense of Obligation is reinforced by the 
fear of punishment. And yet we know, both as 
a matter of internal consciousness, and as a matter 
of familiar observation in others, that this Sense 
of Obligation is not only separable from the fear 
of punishment, but is even sharply contra-dis- 
tinguished from it. Not only is the Sense of 
Obligation powerful in cases where the fear of 
punishment is impossible, but in direct proportion 
as the fear of punishment mixes or prevails, the 
moral character of an act otherwise good is dimi- 
nished or destroyed. The fear of punishment and 



All Nature Instinct zvith Authority. 359 



the hope of reward are, indeed, auxiliary forces 
which cannot be dispensed with in society. But 
we feel that complete goodness and perfect virtue 
would dispense with them altogether ; or rather, 
perhaps, it would be more correct to say, that the 
hope of reward would be merged and lost as a 
separate motive in that highest condition of mind 
in which the performance of duty becomes its 
own reward, because of the satisfaction it gives to 
the Moral Sense, and because of the love borne 
to that Authority whom we feel it our duty to 
obey. 

The place occupied by this instinctive sentiment 
in the equipment of our nature is as obvious as 
it is important. The helplessness of infancy and 
of childhood is not greater than would be the 
helplessness of the race if the disposition to accept 
and to obey Authority were wanting in us. It 
is implanted in our nature only because it is one 
of the first necessities of our life, and a fundamental 
condition of the development of our powers. All 
Nature breathes the spirit of Authority, and is full 
of the exercise of command. " Thou shalt," or 
"Thou shalt not/' are words continually on her 
lips, and all her injunctions and all her prohibitions 
are backed by the most tremendous sanctions. 
Moreover, the most tremendous of these sanctions. 



3 6 o 



The Unity of Nature. 



are often those which are not audibly proclaimed, 
but those which come upon us most gradually, most 
imperceptibly, and after the longest lapse of time. 
Some of the most terrible diseases which afflict 
humanity are known to be the results of vice, and 
what has long been known of some of these diseases 
is more and more reasonably suspected of many 
others. The truth is, that we are born into a 
System of things in which every act carries with it, 
by indissoluble ties, a long train of consequences 
reaching to the most distant future, and which for 
the whole course of time affect our own condition, 
the condition of other men, and even the conditions 
of external Nature. And yet we cannot see those 
consequences beyond the shortest way, and very 
often those which lie nearest are in the highest 
degree deceptive as an index to ultimate results. 
Neither pain nor pleasure can be accepted as a 
guide. With the lower animals, indeed, these, for 
the most part, tell the truth, the whole truth, and 
nothing but the truth. Appetite is all that the 
creature has, and in the gratification of it the highest 
law of the animal Being is fulfilled. In Man, too, 
appetite has its own indispensable function to dis- 
charge. But it is a lower function, and amounts 
to nothing more than that of furnishing to Reason 
a few of the primary data on which it has to work 
—a few, and a few only. Physical pain is indeed 



Man Responsive to Imperial Code. 



361 



one of the threatenings of natural Authority ; and 
physical pleasure is one of its rewards. But neither 
the one nor the other forms more than a mere 
fraction of that awful and Imperial Code under 
which we live. It is the Code of an everlasting- 
Kingdom, and of a jurisprudence which endures 
throughout all generations. It is a Code which 
continually imposes on Man the abandonment of 
pleasure, and the endurance of pain, whenever and 
wherever the higher purposes of its law demand of 
him the sacrifice. Nor has this spirit of Authority 
ever been without its witness in the human Spirit, 
or its response in the human Will. On the contrary, 
in all ages of the world, dark and distorted as have 
been his understandings of Authority, Man has been 
prone to acknowledge it, and to admit it as the 
basis of Obligation and the rule of duty. This, 
at all events, is one side of his character, and it is 
universally recognised as the best. 

There is no difficulty, then, in seeing the place 
which this Instinct holds in the Unity of Nature. It 
belongs to that class of gifts, universal in the world, 
which enable all living things to fulfil their part in 
the Order of Nature, and to discharge the functions 
which belong to it. It is when we pass from a re- 
view of those instincts and powers with which Man 
has been endowed, to a review of their actual work- 
ing and results, that we for the first time encounter 



362 



The Unity of Nature. 



facts which are wholly exceptional, and which it is, 
accordingly, most difficult to reconcile with the uni- 
ties of Nature. This difficulty does not lie in the 
mere existence of a Being with powers which re- 
quire for their perfection a long process of develop- 
ment. There is no singularity in this. On the 
contrary, it is according to the usual course and the 
universal analogy of Nature. Development in dif- 
ferent forms, through a great variety of stages, and 
at different rates of progress, is the most familiar of 
all facts in Creation. In the case of some of the 
lower animals, and especially in the case of many 
among the lowest, the process of development is 
carried to an extent which may almost be said to 
make the work of Creation visible. There are 
numberless creatures which pass through separate 
stages of existence having no likeness whatever to 
each other. In passing through these stages, the 
same Organism differs from itself in form, in struc- 
ture, in the food on which it subsists, and even in the 
very element in which it breathes and lives. Physio- 
logists tell us that changes having a mysterious and 
obscure analogy with these, pass over the embryo 
of all higher animals before their birth. But after 
birth the development of every individual among 
the hiofher orders of creation is limited to those 
changes which belong to growth, to maturity, and 
decay. Man shares in these changes, but in addi- 



Seeming Anomaly in Human Development. 363 



tion to these he. undergoes a development which 
affects him not merely as an individual, but as a 
species and a race. This is purely a development 
of mind, of character, and of knowledge, giving, 
by accumulation from generation to generation, in- 
creased command over the resources of Nature, and 
a higher understanding of the enjoyments and of 
the aims of life. 

It is true, indeed, that this is a kind of develop- 
ment which is itself exceptional — that is to say, 
it is a kind of development of which none of the 
lower animals are susceptible, and which therefore 
separates widely between them and Man. But 
although it is exceptional with reference to the 
lower orders of Creation, it is very important to 
observe that it constitutes no anomaly when it is 
regarded in connection with Creation as a whole. 
On the contrary, it is the natural and necessary 
result of the gift of Reason and of all those mental 
powers which are its servants or allies. But all 
Nature is full of these — so full, that every little bit 
and fragment of its vast domain overflows with 
matter of inexhaustible interest to that one only 
Being who has the impulse of inquiry and the 
desire to know. This power or capacity in every 
department of Nature of fixing the attention and 
of engrossing the interest of Man, depends on the 
close correspondence between his own Faculties 



364 The Unity of Nature. 



and those which are reflected in Creation, and 
on his power of recognising that correspondence 
as the highest result of investigation. The lower 
animals do reasonable things without the gift 
of Reason, and things, as we have seen, often 
involving a very distant foresight, without having 
themselves any knowledge of the future. They 
work for that which is to be, without seeing or' feel- 
ing anything beyond that which is. They enjoy, 
but they cannot understand. Reason is, as it were, 
brooding over them and working through them, 
whilst at the same time it is wanting in them. 
Between the Faculties they possess, therefore, and 
the governing principles of the System in which 
they live and under which they serve, there is, as it 
were, a vacant space. It is no anomaly that this 
space should be occupied by a Being with higher 

m 

powers. On the contrary, it would be the greatest 
of all anomalies if it were really vacant. It would 
be strange indeed if there were no link connecting, 
more closely than any of the lower animals can con- 
nect, the Mind that is in Creation with the Mind 
that is in the Creature. This is the place occupied 
by Man's Reason — Reason not outside of, but in 
the Creature — working not only through him, but 
also in him — Reason conscious of itself, and con- 
scious of the relation in which it stands to that 
measureless Intelligence of which the Universe is 



The Absolutely Singular in Man. 365 



full. In occupying this place, Man fills up, in 
some degree at least, what would otherwise be 
wanting to the Continuity of things ; and in pro- 
portion as he is capable of development — in pro- 
portion as his Faculties are expanded — he does fill 
up this place more and more. 

There is nothing, then, really anomalous or at 
variance with the Unity of Nature, either in the 
special elevation of the powers which belong to 
Man, or in the fact that they start from small 
beginnings, and are capable of being developed to 
an extent which, though certainly not infinite, is at 
least indefinite. That which is really exceptional, 
and indeed absolutely singular in Man, is the per- 
sistent tendency of his development to take a 
wrong direction. In all other creatures it is a pro- 
cess which follows a certain and determined law, 
going straight to a definite, consistent, and intel- 
ligible end. In Man alone it is a process which 
is prone to take a perverted course, tending not 
merely to arrest his progress, but to lead him back 
along descending paths to results of utter degrada- 
tion and decay. I am not now affirming that this 
has been the actual course of Man as a Species or as 
a Race, when that course is considered as a whole. 
But that it is often the course of individual men, 
and that it has been the course of particular races 
and generations cf men in the history of the world, 



366 



The Unity of Nature. 



is a fact which cannot be denied. The general law 
may be a law of progress ; but it is certain that this 
law is liable not only to arrest but to reversal. In 
truth, it is never allowed to operate unopposed, 
or without heavy deductions from its work. For 
there is another law ever present, and ever work- 
ing in the reverse direction. Running alongside, 
as it were, of the tendency to progress, there is the 
other tendency to retrogression. Between these 
two there is a war which never ceases, — sometimes 
the one, sometimes the other, seeming to prevail. 
And even when the better and higher tendency is 
in the ascendant, its victory is qualified and abated 
by its great antagonist. For just as in Physics the 
joint operation of two forces upon any moving body 
results in a departure from the course it would have 
taken if it had been subject to one alone, so in the 
moral world almost every step in the progress of 
Mankind deviates more or less from the right 
direction. And every such deviation must and does 
increase, until much that had been gained is again 
lost in new developments of corruption and of vice. 
The recognition of this fact does not depend on any 
particular theory as to the nature or origin of moral 
distinctions. It is equally clear, whether we judge 
according to the crudest standard of the Utilitarian 
scheme, or according to the higher estimates of 
an Independent Morality. Viewed under either 



Human Perversions that are Singular. 367 



system, the course of development in Man cannot 
be reconciled with the ordinary course of Nature, 
or with the general law under which all other crea- 
tures fulfil the conditions of their bein^. 

It is no mere failure to realise aspirations which 
are vague and imaginary that constitutes this ex- 
ceptional element in the history and in the actual 
condition of Mankind. That which constitutes the 
terrible anomaly of his case admits of perfectly clear 
and specific definition. Man has been, and still is, 
a constant prey to appetites which are morbid — 
to opinions which are irrational — to imaginations 
which are horrible, — to practices which are destruc- 
tive. The prevalence and the power of these in a 
great variety of forms and of degrees is a fact with 
which we are familiar — so familiar, indeed, that we 
fail to be duly impressed with the strangeness and 
the mystery which really belong to it. All savage 
races are bowed and bent under the yoke of their 
own perverted instincts — instincts which generally 
in their root and origin have an obvious utility, but 
which in their actual development are the source of 
miseries without number and without end. Some 
of the most horrible perversions which are prevalent 
among Savages have no counterpart among any 
other created Beings, and when judged by the 
barest standard of utility, place Man immeasurably 



368 



The Unity of Nature, 



below the level of the Beasts. We are accustomed 
to say of many of the habits of savage life that 
they are "brutal." But this is entirely to misre- 
present the place which they really occupy in the 
System of Nature. None of the Brutes have any 
such perverted dispositions ; none of them are ever 
subject to the destructive operation of such habits 
as are common among men. And this contrast is 
all the more remarkable when we consider that the 
very worst of these habits affect conditions of life 
which the lower animals share with us, and in which 
any departure from those natural laws which they 
universally obey, must necessarily produce, and do 
actually produce, consequences so destructive as to 
endanger the very existence of the race. Such are 
all those conditions of life affecting the relation 
of the sexes which are common to all creatures, 
and in which Man alone exhibits the widest and 
most hopeless divergence from the Order of Nature. 

It fell in the way of Malthus in his celebrated 
work on Population to search in the accounts of 
travellers for those causes which operate, in dif- 
ferent countries of the world, to check the progress, 
and to limit the numbers of Mankind. Foremost 
among these is vice, and foremost among the vices 
is that most unnatural one, of the cruel treatment 
of women. "In every part of the world," says 



Anomaly in the Conduct of Savages. 369 



Malthus, "one of the most general characteristics 
of the Savage is to despise and degrade the female 
sex. Among most of the tribes in America, their 
condition is so peculiarly grievous, that servitude is 
a name too mild to describe their wretched state. 
A wife is no better than a beast of burden. While 
the man passes his days in idleness or amusement, 
the woman is condemned to incessant toil. Tasks 
are imposed upon her without mercy, and services 
are received without complacence or gratitude. 
There are some districts in America where this 
state of degradation has been so severely felt that 
mothers have destroyed their female infants, to 
deliver them at once from a life in which they were 
doomed to such a miserable slavery." * It is im- 
possible to find for this most vicious tendency any 
place among the Unities of Nature. There is no- 
thing like it among the Beasts. With them the 
equality of the sexes, as regards all the enjoyments 
as well as all the work of life, is the universal rule. 
And among those of them in which social instincts 
have been specially implanted, and whose systems 
of polity are like the most civilised polities of men, 
the females of the race are treated with a strange 
mixture of love, of loyalty, and of devotion. If, 
indeed, we consider the necessary and inevitable 
results of the habit prevalent among savage men to 

* Malthus, 6th Edition, vol. i. p. 39. 

2 A 



37o 



The Unity of Nature. 



maltreat and degrade their women, — its effects upon 
the constitution, and character, and endurance of 
children,— we cannot fail to see how grossly un- 
natural it is, how it must tend to the greater and 
greater degradation of the race, and how recovery 
from this downward path must become more and 
more difficult or impossible. But vicious, destruc- 
tive, unnatural as this habit is, it is not the only 
one or the worst of similar character which prevail 
among savage men. A horrid catalogue comes to 
our remembrance when we think of them — poly- 
andry, infanticide, cannibalism, deliberate cruelty, 
systematic slaughter connected with warlike pas- 
sions or with religious customs. Nor are these 
vices, or the evils resulting from them, peculiar to 
the savage state. Some of them, indeed, more or 
less changed and modified in form, attain a rank 
luxuriance in civilised communities, corrupt the 
very bones and marrow of society, and have 
brought powerful nations to decay and death. 

It is, indeed, impossible to look abroad either 
upon the past history or the existing condition of 
Mankind, whether savage or civilised, without see- 
ing that it presents phenomena which are strange 
and monstrous — incapable of being reduced within 
the harmony of things, or reconciled with the Unity 
of Nature. The contrasts which it presents to the 
general laws and course of Nature cannot be stated 



Element of Confusion in the Universal Order, 371 



too broadly. There is nothing like it in the world. 
It is an element of confusion amidst universal order. 
Powers exceptionally high spending themselves in 
activities exceptionally base ; the desire and the 
faculty of acquiring knowledge coupled with the 
desire and the faculty of turning it to the worst 
account ; instincts immeasurably superior to those 
of other creatures, alongside of conduct and of 
habits very much below the level of the Beast — 
such are the combinations with which we have 
to deal as unquestionable facts when we contem- 
plate the actual condition of Mankind. And they 
are combinations in the highest degree unnatural ; 
there is nothing to account for, or to explain them 
in any apparent natural necessity. 

The question then arises, as one of the greatest 
of all mysteries, — how it is and why it is that the 
higher gifts of Man's nature should not have been 
associated with corresponding dispositions to lead 
as straight and as unerringly to the crown and 
consummation of his course, as the dispositions of 
other creatures do lead them to the perfect develop- 
ment of their powers and the perfect discharge of 
their functions in the economy of Nature ? 

It is as if weapons had been placed in the hands 
of Man which he has not the strength, nor the 
knowledge, nor the rectitude of Will to wield aright. 
It is in this contrast that he stands alone. In the 



372 



The Unity of Nature, 



light of this contrast we see that the corruption of 
human nature is not a mere dogma of Theology, but 
a fact of science. The nature of Man is seen to 
be corrupt not merely as compared with some 
imaginary standard which is supposed to have 
existed at some former time, but as compared with 
a standard which prevails in every other depart- 
ment of Nature at the present day. We see, too, 
that the analogies of Creation are adverse to the 
supposition that this condition of things was original. 
It looks as if something exceptional must have 
happened. The rule throughout all the rest of 
Nature is, that every creature does handle the gifts 
which have been given to it with a skill as won- 
derful as it is complete, for the highest purposes of 
its own Being, and for the fulfilment of its part in the 
Unity of Creation. In Man alone we have a Being 
in whom this Adjustment is imperfect, — in whom 
this faculty is so defective as often to miss its aim. 
Instead of unity of law with certainty and harmony 
of result, we have antagonism of laws, with results 
at the best of much shortcoming and often of hope- 
less failure. And the anomaly is all the greater 
when we consider that this failure affects chiefly that 
portion of Man's nature which has the direction of 
the rest — on which the whole result depends, as 
regards his conduct, his happiness, and his destiny. 
The general fact is this — first, that Man is prone to 



Inveterate Moral Perversities in Man. 373 



set up and to invent standards of Obligation which 
are low, false, mischievous, and even ruinous ; and 
secondly, that when he has become possessed of 
standards of Obligation' which are high, and true, 
and beneficent, he is prone, first, to fall short in 
the observance of them, and next, to suffer them, 
through various processes of decay, to be obscured 
and lost 



CHAPTER X. 



On the Degradation of Man. 

T T may be well, before proceeding farther in this 
branch of our inquiry, to retrace for a little the 
path we have been following, and to identify the 
conclusions to which we have been led. 

In the first place, we have seen that the Sense of 
Obligation considered in itself — that is to say, con- 
sidered apart from the particular actions to which it 
is attached — is a simple and elementary conception 
of the Mind, insomuch that in every attempt to 
analyse it, or to explain its origin and growth, this 
absurdity can always be detected,— that the analy- 
sis or explanation universally assumes the previous 
existence of that very conception for which it 
professes to account. 

In the second place, we have seen that, just as 
Reason, or the logical Faculty, begins its work with 
the direct perception of some simple and elemen- 



Recapitulation as Regards the Moi'al Sense. 375 



tary truths, of which no other account can be given 
than that they are intuitively perceived, or, in 
other words, that they are what is called " self- 
evident," so, in like manner, the Moral Sense begins 
its work with certain elementary perceptions and 
feelings in respect to conduct, which arise out of 
the very nature of things, and come instinctively 
to all men. The earliest of these feelings is the 
Obligation of obedience to that first Authority the 
rightfulness of which over us is not a question but 
a fact. The next of these feelings is the Obligation 
of acting towards other men as we know we should 
like them to act towards ourselves. The first of 
these feelings of Obligation is inseparably associated 
with the fact that all men are born helpless, abso- 
lutely dependent, and subject to Parents. The 
second of these feelings of Obligation is similarly 
founded on our conscious community of nature 
with other men, and on the consequent universal 
applicability to them of our own estimates of good 
and evil. 

In the third place, we have seen that this asso- 
ciation of the higher powers of Man with rudi- 
mentary data which are supplied by the facts of 
Nature, is in perfect harmony with that condition 
of things which prevails throughout Creation, — the 
condition, namely, that every creature is provided 
from the first with just so much of instinct and of 



376 The Unity of Nature. 



impulse as is requisite to propel and guide it in the 
kind and to the measure of development of which 
its Organism is susceptible, leading it with unfailing 
regularity to the fulfilment of the law of its own 
Being, and to the successful discharge of the func- 
tions assigned to it in the world. 

In the fourth place, we have seen that the only 
really exceptional fact connected with Man is — not 
that he has faculties of a much higher kind than 
other creatures, nor that these faculties are suscep- 
tible of a corresponding kind and measure of de- 
velopment — but that in Man alone this development 
has a persistent tendency to take a wrong direction, 
leading not towards, but away from, the perfecting 
of his powers. 

In the last place, we have seen that as a matter 
of fact, and as a result of this tendency, a very 
large portion of Mankind, embracing almost all the 
savage races, and large numbers of men among the 
most civilised communities, are a prey to habits, 
practices, and dispositions which are monstrous and 
unnatural — one test of this unnatural character 
being that nothing analogous is to be found among 
the lower animals in those spheres of impulse and 
of action in which they % have a common nature with 
ouf own ; and another test being that these prac- 
tices, habits, and dispositions are always directly 
injurious and often even fatal to the race. For- 



Moral Anomalies Call for Explanation. 377 



bidden thus and denounced by the highest of all 
Authorities, which is the Authority of Natural 
Law, these habits and practices stand before us as 
unquestionable exceptions to the Unity of Nature, 
and as conspicuous violations of the general har- 
mony of Creation. 

When, however, we have come to see that such 
is really the character of these results, we cannot be 
satisfied with the mere recognition of their exist- 
ence as a fact. We seek an explanation and a cause. 
We seek for this, moreover, in a very different sense 
from that in which we seek for an explanation and 
a cause of those facts which have the opposite 
character of being according to law and in harmony 
with the analogies of Nature. With facts of this 
last kind, when we have found the place into which 
they fit in the order of things, we can and we do 
rest satisfied as facts which are really ultimate — 
that is to say, as facts for which no other explana- 
tion is required than that they are part of the 
Order of Nature, and are due to that one great 
cause, or to that combination of causes, from which 
the whole harmony and Unity of Nature is derived. 
But when we are dealing with facts which cannot be 
brought within this category, — which cannot be re- 
ferred to this Order, but which are, on the contrary, 
an evident departure from it, — then we must feel 
that these facts require an explanation and a cause 



378 



The Unity of Nature, 



as special and exceptional as the results them- 
selves. 

There is, indeed, one theory in respect to those 
mysterious aberrations of Human Character, which, 
although widely prevalent, can only be accepted 
as an explanation by those who fail to see in what 
the real difficulty consists. That theory is, that the 
vicious and destructive habits and tendencies pre- 
vailing among men, are not aberrant phenomena at 
all, but are original conditions of our nature, — that 
the very worst of them have been primitive and 
universal, so that the lowest forms of savage life 
are the nearest representatives of the primordial 
condition of the race. 

Now, assuming for the present that this were 
true, it would follow that the anomaly and ex- 
ception which Man presents among the unities 
of Nature is much more violent and more 
profound than on any other supposition. For it 
would represent the contrast between his instincts 
and those of the lower animals as greatest and 
widest at the very moment when he first appeared 
among the creatures which, in respect to these 
instincts, are so superior to himself. And it is to 
be observed that this argument applies equally to 
every conceivable theory or belief as to the origin 
of Man. It is equally true whether he was a 
special creation, or an unusual birth, or the result 



The Theory that Savagery is Primordial. 379 



of a long series of unusual births, each marked by 
some new accession to the aggregate of faculties 
which distinguish him from the lower animals. As 
regards the anomaly he presents, it matters no 
which of these theories of his orisfin be held. If 
his birth, or his creation, or his development, what- 
ever its methods may have been, took place after 
the analogy of the lower animals, then, along with 
his higher powers of mind, there would have been 
corresponding instincts associated with them to 
guide and direct those powers in their proper use. 
It is in this essential condition of all created things 
that Man, especially in his savage state, presents an 
absolute contrast with the Brutes. It is no explana- 
tion, but, on the contrary, an insuperable increase 
of the difficulty, to suppose that this contrast was 
widest and most absolute when Man made his first 
appearance in the world. It would be to assume 
that, for a most special and most exceptional result, 
there was no special or exceptional cause. If Man 
was, indeed, born with an innate propensity to 
maltreat his women, to murder his children, to kill 
and eat his fellow, to turn the physical functions of 
his nature into uses which are destructive to his 
race, then, indeed, it would be literally true that 

" Dragons of the prime, 
That tear each other in their slime, 
Were mellow music matched with him." 



3§o 



The Unity of Nature* 



It would be true, because there were no dragons of 
the prime, even as there are no reptiles of the 
present age — there is no creature, however terrible 
or loathsome its aspect may be to us, among all the 
myriads of created things — which does not pass 
through all the stages of its development with 
perfect accuracy to the end, or which, having 
reached that end, fails to exhibit a corresponding 
harmony between its propensities and its powers, or 
between both of these and the functions it has to 
perform in the economy of Creation. So absolute 
and so perfect is this harmony, that men have 
dreamed that somehow it is self-caused, the need 
and the requirement of a given function producing 
its appropriate Organ, and the Organ again reacting 
on the requirement and the need. Whatever may 
be the confusion of thought involved in this idea, it 
is at least an emphatic testimony to the fact of an 
order and an adjustment of the most perfect kind 
prevailing in the work of what is called Evolution, 
and suggesting some cause which is of necessary 
and universal operation. The nearer therefore we 
may suppose the origin of Man may have been to 
the origin of the Brutes, the nearer also would his 
condition have been to the fulfilment of a law which 
is of universal application among them. Under the 
fulfilment of that law the higher gifts and powers 
with which Man is endowed would have run 



What is Meant by Civilisation, 



381 



smoothly their appointed course, would have un- 
folded as a bud unfolds to flower, — as a flower 
ripens into fruit, — and would have presented results 
absolutely different from those which are actually 
presented either by the savage, or by what is called 
the civilised, condition of Mankind. 

And here it may be well to define, as clearly as 
we can, what we mean by Civilisation, because 
the word is very loosely used, and because the 
conceptions it involves are necessarily complex. 
Usually it is associated in our minds with all that 
is highest in the social, moral, and political con- 
dition of the Christian nations as represented in 
our own country and in our own time. Thus, for 
example, respect for human life, and tenderness 
towards every form of human suffering, is one of 
the most marked features of the best modern 
culture. But we know that this sentiment, and 
many others which are related to it, were compara- 
tively feeble in the case of other societies which, 
nevertheless, we acknowledge to have been very 
highly civilised. We must, therefore, attach some 
more definite and restricted meaning to the word, 
and we must agree to understand by Civilisation 
only those characteristic conditions which have 
been common to all peoples whom we have been 
accustomed to recognise as among- the governing 
nations of the world. And when we come to con- 



3 82 



The Unity of Nature. 



sider what these characteristics are, we find that, 
though complex, they are yet capable of being 
brought within a tolerably clear and simple defini- 
tion. The Latin word czvzs, from which our word 
Civilisation comes, still represents the fundamental 
conception which is involved. The citizen' of an 
imperial City, — the subject of an imperial Ruler, — 
the member of a great State, — this was the con- 
dition which constituted the Roman idea of the 
rank and status of Civilisation. No doubt many 
things are involved in this condition, and many 
other things have come to be associated with it. 
But the essential elements of the civilised condi- 
tion, as thus defined or understood, can readily be 
separated from others which are not essential. An 
extended knowledge of the useful arts, and the 
possession of such a settled system of Law and 
Government as enables men to live in great political 
communities, these are the essential features of what 
we understand by Civilisation. Other characteristics 
may co-exist with these, but nothing more is neces- 
sarily involved in a proper understanding, or even 
in the usual application of the word. In particular, 
•we cannot affirm that a civilised condition involves 
necessarily any of the higher moral elements of 
character. It is true, indeed, that no great State, 
nor even any great City, can have been founded 
and built up without courage and patriotism. 



The Idea of Civilisation and that of Virtue. 383 



Accordingly these were perhaps the most esteemed 
virtues of antiquity. But these are by no means 
confined to civilised men, and are, indeed, often 
conspicuous in the Savage and in the Barbarian. 
Courage, in at least its lower forms, is one of the 
commonest of all qualities ; and patriotism, under 
the like limitation, may almost be said to be an 
universal passion. It -is in itself simply a natural 
consequence of the Social Instinct, common to Man 
and to many' of the lower animals — that Instinct 
which leads us to identify our own passions and 
our own sympathies with any brotherhood to which 
we may belong, — whatever the associating tie of 
that brotherhood may be, — whether it be morally 
good, bad, or indifferent. Like every other instinct, 
it rises in its moral character in proportion as it is 
guided by reason and by conscience, and in propor- 
tion as, through these, it becomes identified with 
duty and with self-devotion. But the idea of Civi- 
lisation is in itself separate from the idea of virtue. 
Men of great refinement of manners may be, and 
often are, exceedingly corrupt. And what is true 
of individuals is true of communities. The highest 
civilisations of the heathen world were marked by 
a very low code of morals, and by a practice even 
lower than their code. But the intellect was 
thoroughly cultivated. Knowledge of the useful 
arts, taste in the fine arts, and elaborate systems 



3^4 



The Unity of Nature. 



both of civil polity and of military organisation, 
combined to make, first Greek, and then Roman, 
civilisation, in such matters the basis of our own. 

It is, therefore, only necessary to consider for a 
moment these essential characteristics of what we 
mean by Civilisation, to see that it is a conception 
altogether incongruous with any possible idea we 
can form of the condition of our First Parents, or, 
indeed, of their offspring for many generations. 
An extended knowledge of the useful arts is of 
necessity the result of accumulation. Highly orga- 
nised systems of polity were both needless and 
impossible before settled and populous communities 
had arisen. Government was a simple matter when 
the " world's grey fathers " exercised over their own 
children the first and the most indisputable of all 
authorities. 

It is unfortunate that the two words which are 
habitually used to indicate the condition opposite to 
that of Civilisation are words both of which have 
come to mean a great deal more than mere ignor- 
ance of the useful arts, or a merely rudimentary 
state of Law and Government. These two words are 
Barbarism and Savagery. Each of these has come to 
be associated with the idea of special vices of char- 
acter and of habit, such as cruelty and ferocity. But 
44 Barbarian/' in the classical language from which it 
came to us, had no such meaning. It was applied 



The Terms "Barbarian" and" Savage" 385 



indiscriminately by the Greeks to all nations, and 
to all conditions of society other than their own, 
and did not necessarily imply any fault or failure 
other than that of not belonging to the race, and 
not partaking of the culture which was then, in 
many respects at least, the highest in the world. 
St. Paul refers to all men who spoke in any tongue 
unknown to the Christian communities as men who 
were " to them barbarians." But he did not asso- 
ciate this term with any moral faults, such as 
violence or ferocity ; on the contrary, in his narra- 
tive of his shipwreck on the coast of Malta, he calls 
the natives of that Island " barbarous people" in 
the same sentence in which he tells us of their 
kindness and hospitality. This simple and purely 
negative meaning of the word barbarian has been 
lost to us, and it has become inseparably associated 
with characteristics which are indeed common 
among uncivilised nations, but are by no means 
confined to them. The epithet " savage/' of course, 
still more distinctly means something quite different 
from rude, or primitive, or uncultivated. The ele- 
ment of cruelty or of ferocity is invariably present 
to the mind when we speak of savagery, although 
there are some races — as, for example, the Eskimo 
— who are totally uncivilised, but who, in this sense, 
are by no means savage. 

And this may we'll remind us that, as we have 



336 



The Unity of Nature. 



found it necessary to define to ourselves the con- 
dition which we are to understand by the word 
Civilisation, so it is not less essential to define and 
limit the times to which we are to apply the word 
Primeval. For this word also is habitually used with 
even greater laxity of meaning. It is often em- 
ployed as synonymous with primitive, and this again 
is applied not only to all times which are pre- 
historic, but to all conditions even in our own age 
which are rude or savage. There is an assumption 
that, the farther we go back in time, there was not 
only less and less extensive knowledge of the useful 
arts, — not only simpler and simpler systems of life 
and polity, — but also that there were deeper and 
deeper depths of the special characteristics of the 
modern Savage. We have, however, only to con- 
sider what some of these characteristics are, to be 
convinced that although they may have arisen in 
early times, they cannot possibly have existed in the 
times which were the earliest of all. Things may 
have been done, and habits may have prevailed, 
when the multiplication and dispersion of Mankind 
had proceeded to a considerable extent, which cannot 
possibly have been done, and which cannot possibly 
have prevailed when as yet there was only a single 
pair of Beings " worthy to be called" man and woman, 
nor even when as yet all the children of that pair 
knew themselves to be of one family and blood. 



* 



Barbarism and Savagery not Primeval. 387 

The word Primeval ought, if it is to have any 
definite meaning at all. to be confined to this 
earliest time alone. It has already been pointed 
out, that on the supposition that the condition of 
primeval Man approximated to the condition of the 
lower animals, that condition could not have been 
nearer to, but must, on the contrary, have been 
very much farther removed from, the condition of 
the modern Savage. If, for example, there ever 
was a time when there existed on one spot of Earth, 
or even on more spots than one, a single pair of 
human Beings, it is impossible that they should 
have murdered their offspring, or that they should 
have killed and eaten each other. Accordingly it 
is admitted that cannibalism and infanticide, two 
of the commonest practices of savage and of bar- 
barous life, cannot have been Primeval. But this 
is a conclusion of immense significance. It hints to 
us, if it does no more, that what is true of one 
savage practice may possibly be true of others. It 
breaks down the presumption that whatever is most 
savage is therefore probably the most ancient. 

And then, when we come to think of it, this idea, 
from being vague and general, rises into sugges- 
tions which are definite and specific. On the great 
fundamental subject of the relation of the sexes, 
conclusions not less important than those respecting 
cannibalism and infanticide are forced upon our con- 



388 The Unity of Nature. 



viction. We have seen that the cruel treatment of 
the female sex is almost universal among Savages, 
and that it is entirely unknown among the lower 
animals. It is in the highest degree improbable 
and unnatural to suppose that this habit can have 
been Primeval. But the same considerations carry 
us a great deal farther. They raise a presumption 
in favour of the later origin of other habits and 
customs which are not confined to the savage state, 
but have prevailed, and do now prevail, among 
nations comparatively civilised. There can have 
been no polygamy when as yet there was only a 
single pair, or when there were several single pairs 
widely separated from each other. The presump- 
tion, if not the certainty, therefore is, that Primeval 
Man must have been monogamous. It is a pre- 
sumption supported by the general equality of the 
sexes in respect to the numbers born, with only just 
such an excess of the male sex as tends to maintain 
that equality against the greater risks to life arising 
out of manly pursuits and duties. Thus the facts 
of Nature point to polygamy as in all probability a 
departure from the habits of primeval times. Like 
considerations set aside, as in a still higher degree 

unnatural and improbable, the primeval rank of 

1 

other customs of which the historians of human 
culture tell us, and probably tell us truly, that there 
are many surviving traces among the existing 



Certain Savage Practices not Primeval. 389 

customs of men. Thus " marriage by capture" 
cannot have been Primeval. It may be very 
ancient ; but it cannot possibly have arisen until the 
family of Man had so multiplied and scattered, that 
they had become divided into tribes accustomed to 
act with violence towards each other. And then 
as regards a custom still more barbarous and 
savage, namely, that of polyandry, and that which 
is now euphemistically called " communal marriage," 
apart from the strong presumption in favour of 
primeval monogamy, they are stamped by many 
separate considerations as corruptions and as depar- 
tures from primeval habits. In the first place, all 
such customs are fatally injurious to the propagation 
of the race. In the second place, they are unknown 
in the animal world. In the third place, their origin 
can be assigned, in many cases, if not with certainty 
at least with the highest probability, to one cause, and 
that is the previously-acquired habit of female infan- 
ticide. But as regards this last habit, besides the 
certainty that it cannot have been Primeval, we know 
that it has often arisen from customs such as the ex- 
orbitant cost of marriage portions, which can only 
have grown up under long-developed and highly 
artificial conditions of society. 

But powerful as all these separate considerations 
are to raise at least adverse presumptions against 
the primeval rank of the worst and commonest 



390 The Unity of Nature. 



characteristics of savage life, the force of these con- 
siderations is much increased when we find that 
they are closely connected together, and that they 
all lead up to the recognition of a principle and a 
law. That principle is no other than the principle 
of Development; that law is no other than the law 
of Evolution. It is a curious misunderstanding of 
what that law really is, to suppose that it leads 
only in one direction. It leads in every direction 
in which there is at work any one of the " potential 
energies " of Nature. Development is the growth 
of germs, and according to the nature of the germ 
so is the nature of the growth. The flowers and 
fruits which minister to the use of Man have each 
their own seed, and so have the briars and thorns 
which choke them. Evil has its germs as well as - 
good, and the evolution of them is accompanied by 
effects to which it is impossible to assign a limit. 
Movement is the condition of all Being, in moral as 
well as in material things. Just as one thing leads 
to another in knowledge and in virtue, so does one 
thing lead to another in ignorance and vice. Those 
gradual processes of change which arise out of 
action and reaction between the external condition 
and the internal nature of Man have an energy in 
them of infinite complexity and power. We stand 
here on the firm ground of observation and experi- 
ence. In the shortest space of time, far within the 



Evil a Development as well as Good. 391 



limits even of a single life, we are accustomed to see 
such processes effectual both to elevate and degrade. 
The weak become weaker, and the bad become 
worse. " To him that hath more is given, and 
from him that hath not is taken even that which he 
seemeth to have." And this law, in the region of 
character and of morals, is but the counterpart of 
the law which prevails in the physical regions of 
Nature, where also Development has its double 
aspect. It cannot bring one Organism to the top, 
without sinking another Organism to the bottom. 
That vast variety of natural causes which have 
been grouped and almost personified under the 
phrase " Natural Selection," are causes which neces- 
sarily include both favourable and unfavourable 
conditions. Natural Rejection, therefore, is the 
inseparable correlative of Natural Selection. In the 
battle of life the triumph of one individual, or of one 
species, is the result of causes which bring about 
the failure of another. But there is this great dis- 
tinction between the lower animals and Man, — that 
in their case failure involves death and complete 
extinction, whilst in his case it is compatible with 
prolonged survival. So far as mere existence is 
concerned, the almost infinite plasticity and adap- 
tability of his nature enable him to accommodate 
himself to the hardest lot, and to the most unfavour- 
able conditions. Man is the only animal whose- 



392 



The Unity of Nature, 



possible distribution is not limited to narrow, or 
comparatively narrow, areas, in consequence of 
exclusive dependence upon particular conditions of 
climate and of productions. Some such conditions 
of a highly favourable kind may, and indeed must, 
have governed the selection of his birthplace and 
of his infancy. But when once born and fairly 
launched upon his course, it was in his nature to 
be able to prevail over all or over most of the limi- 
tations which are imposed upon the lower animals. 
But it is this very power of adaptation to unfavour- 
able circumstances which involves of necessity the 
possibility of his development taking an equally 
unfavourable direction. If he can rise to any level, 
so also can he descend to any depth. It is not 
merely that faculties, for the exercise of which there 
is no call and no opportunity, remain dormant, but 
it is, also, that if such faculties have already been 
exercised, they may and often do become so stunted 
that nothing but the rudiments remain. 

With such immense possibilities of change in- 
herent in the nature of Man, we have to consider 
the great element of Time. Strangely enough, it 
seems to be very commonly assumed that, the 
establishment of a great antiquity for the human 
race has some natural, if not some necessary, con- 
nection with the theory that Primeval Man stood on 
some level far lower even than any existing Savage. 



Savage and Civilised both Developed, 



393 



And no doubt this connection would be a real one 
if it were true that during some long series of ages 
Development had not only been always working, but 
had always been working upwards. But if it be 
capable of working, and if it has been actually 
working, also in the opposite direction, then the 
element of Time in its bearing upon conditions of 
modern savagery must have had a very different 
operation. For here it is to be remembered that 
the Savage of the present day is as far removed in 
time from the common origin of our race as the 
man who now exhibits the highest type of moral 
and intellectual culture. Whether that time is repre- 
sented by six thousand, or ten thousand, or a hundred 
thousand years, it is the same for both. If therefore 
the number of years since the origin of Man be taken 
as a multiplier in the processes of elevation, it must 
be taken equally as a multiplier in the processes of 
degradation. Not even on the theory which some 
hold, that the human species has spread from more 
than one centre of birth or of creation, can this con- 
clusion be affected. For even on this hypothesis of 
separate origins, there is no reason whatever to sup- 
pose that the races which are now generally civilised 
are of more recent origin than those which are 
generally savage. Presumably, therefore, all the 
ages which have been at work in the development 
of Civilisation have been at work equally in the 



394 



The Unity of Nature. 



development of Savagery. It is not possible in the 
case of Savagery, any more than in the case of 
Civilisation, that all those ages have been without 
effect. Nor is it possible that the changes they 
have wrought have been all in one direction. The 
conclusion is, that neither Savagery nor Civilisation, 
as we now see them, can represent the primeval 
condition of Man. Both of them are the work of 
time. Both of them are the product of Evolution. 

When, however, this conclusion has been reached, 
we naturally seek for some understanding — some 
definite conception — of the circumstances and con- 
ditions under which Development in Man has taken 
a wrong direction. No similar explanation is re- 
quired of the origin of Civilisation. This is the 
development of Man's powers in the natural direc- 
tion. Great interest, indeed, attaches to the steps 
by which knowledge has been increased, and by 
which invention has been added to invention. But 
there is no mystery to be encountered here — no 
dark or distressing problem to be solved. This kind 
and direction of development is all according to the 
constitution and course of things. It is in harmony 
with all the analogies of Creation. Very different is 
the sense of painful wonder with which we seek an 
explanation of the wretched condition of Man in 
many regions of the Globe, and, still more, with which 
we seek the origin or the cause of all the hideous 



Deteriorating Effects of External Conditions. 395 

customs which are everywhere prevalent among 
savage men, and which often, in their ingenuity 
of evil, and in the sweep of their destructive force, 
leave it a wonder that the race survives at all. 

There are, however, some considerations, and 
some facts, on which we may very safely advance at 
least a few steps towards the explanation we desire. 
Two great causes of change, two great elements 
of Development or Evolution, have been specified 
above — namely, the external conditions and the 
internal nature of Man. Let us look at them for a 
little separately, in so far as they can be separated 
at all.' 5 ' 

It is certain that external or physical conditions 
have a very powerful, and sometimes a very rapid, 
effect both on the body and on the mind of Man. 
The operation of this law has been seen and noted 
even in the midst of the most highly civilised com- 
munities. There are kinds of labour which have 
been found to exert a rapid influence in degrading 
the human frame, and in deteriorating the human 
character. So marked has been this effect, that it 
has commanded the attention of Parliaments, and 
the course of Legislation has been turned aside to 
meet the dangers it involved. Moreover, our ex- 

* The argument which follows was urged in a former work on 
u Primeval Man." It has been here re-written and re-considered 
with reference to various objections and replies. 



39& 



The Unity of Nature. 



perience in this matter has been very various. 
Different kinds of employment, involving different 
kinds of unfavourable influence, have each tended 
to develop its own kind of mischief, and to establish 
its own type of degradation. The particular con- 
ditions which are unfavourable may be infinitely 
various. The evils which arise out of the abuses of 
civilised life can never be identical with the evils to 
which the earlier races of Mankind may have been 
exposed. But the power of external conditions in 
modifying the form, and in moulding the character 
of men, is stamped as a general law of universal 
application. 

In connection with this law, the first great fact 
which calls for our attention is the actual distri- 
bution of Mankind in relation to the Physical 
Geography of the Globe. That distribution is 
nearly universal. From the earliest times when 
civilised men began to explore distant regions, 
they found everywhere other races of men already 
established. And this has held true down to the 
latest acquisitions of discovery. When the New 
World was discovered by Columbus, he found that 
it must have been a very old world indeed to the 
human species. Not only every great Continent, 
but, with rare exceptions, even every habitable 
Island, has been found peopled by the genus Homo. 
The explorers might find, and in many cases did 



The Race, its Distribution and Origin. 397 

actually find, everything else in Nature different 
from the country of their birth. Not a beast, or 
bird, or plant, — not an insect, or a reptile, or a fish, 
might be the same as those of which they had any 
previous knowledge. The whole face of Nature 
might be new and strange — but always with this 
one solitary exception, that everywhere Man was 
compelled to recognise himself — represented, indeed, 
often by people of strange aspect and of strange 
speech, but by people nevertheless exhibiting all 
the unmistakable characters of the human race. 

In ancient times, before the birth of physical 
science, this fact might not appear so singular and 
exceptional as it really is. Before Man had begun 
to form any definite conceptions as to his own 
origin, or as to his place in Nature, it was easy to 
suppose in some vague way that the inhabitants 
of distant regions were " Aborigines," or as the 
Greeks called them " Autocthonoi " — that they were 
somehow native to the soil, and had sprung from 
it. But this conception belongs essentially to that 
stage and time when tradition has been lost, and 
before reasoning has begun. Those who refuse 
to accept the Jewish Scriptures as in any sense 
authoritative, must at least recognise them as the 
records of a very ancient and a very sublime 
Cosmogony. That Cosmogony rests upon these 
four leading ideas — first, that the Globe has been 
brought to its present condition through Days of 



398 



The Unity of Nature. 



Change ; secondly, that from a state which can 
only be described as Chaos, it came to be divided 
into Sea, and Land, and Atmosphere ; thirdly, that 
the lower animals were born first, — Man being the 
last as he is the highest product of Creation ; 
fourthly, that he appeared first at one place only 
in the world, and that from one pair has all the 
Earth been overspread. 

It is remarkable that in this general outline of 
events, and especially in the unity of Man's origin, 
the progress of discovery, and those later specu- 
lations which have outrun discovery, are in strict 
accordance with the tradition recorded by the 
Jewish Prophets. There are, indeed, some scien- 
tific men who think that different races of men 
represent different species — or, at least, that if 
Man be defined as one species, it is a species 
which has spread from more than one place of 
origin. But those who hold to this idea are men 
who stand outside the general current of scientific 
thought. The tendency of that thought is more 
and more to demand unity and simplicity in our 
conception of the Methods of Creation, and of the 
order of events through which the birth of Species 
has been brought about. So strong is this ten- 
dency, and so intimately connected is it with the 
intellectual conceptions on which the modern 
theory of Development has been founded, that 
Mr. Darwin himself, and Mr. Wallace, who may 



Scripture and Science as to Mans Origin. 399 



be said to be joint-author with him of that theory, 
both lay it down as a fundamental postulate, that 
each new Organic Form has originated, and could 
only originate, at one place. This doctrine is by 
no means a necessity of thought, nor is it a 
necessary consequence of the theory of Develop- 
ment. It rests mainly on the doctrine of chances,* 
and that doctrine may be wholly inapplicable to 
-events which are governed not by accident but by 
Law. It is, however, a postulate of the particular 
form of that theory which Mr. Darwin has adopted. 
It is not always easy to reconcile this postulate 
with the existing distribution over the Globe of 
animal Forms. But it is not absolutely inconsistent 
with the facts so far as we know them ; and it is 
interesting to observe how universally and tacitly 
it is assumed in all the current explanations of the 
history of Creation. On this point, therefore, of the 
unity of Man's origin, those who bow to the autho- 
rity of the most ancient and the most venerable of 
traditions, and those who accept the most imposing 
and the most popular of modern scientific theories, 
are found standing on common ground, and accept- 
ing the same result. 

And when we come to consider a very curious 
subject, namely, the configuration of the habitable 

* In this passage I rely on a private letter to myself from Mr. Darwin, 
in which he rested the conclusion referred to upon the chances against the 
same Form becoming-developed in more places than one-. 



400 



The Unity of Nature. 



Continents of the Globe, we find that this configu- 
ration stands in a very intelligible relation to the 
dispersion of Mankind from a single centre. If, 
indeed, we could suppose that the earliest condition 
of our race was a condition of advanced knowledge 
in the useful arts, there would be no difficulty to 
solve. The ereat Oceans of the world are now the 
easiest highways of travel and consequently of dis- 
persion. The art and the science of navigation has 
made them so. But we cannot imagine that this 
art or this science was known to our forefathers of a 
very early age. Various means of crossing narrow* 
waters, from the use of solid logs of wood to the 
use of the same logs when hollowed out, and so to 
the use of canoes and boats, were in all probability 
among the very earliest of human inventions. But 
not the less would it have been impossible with 
these inventions to cross the Atlantic, or the Pacific, 
or the Indian Ocean, or even many of the more 
limited tracts of Sea which now separate so many 
habitable regions. Some other solution must be 
found for the problem presented by the fact that 
the earliest navigators who traversed those Seas and 
Oceans, have always found the lands on the other 
side already colonised, and in some cases thickly 
inhabited by races and nations which had made 
considerable advances in civilisation. Yet, this 
problem presents no serious difficulty in accepting 



Configuration of the Earth adapted to Dispersion. 401 



the unity of the human race, when it is regarded in 
the light of Physical Geography. 

The distribution of the larger tracts of Land 
and Sea upon our Planet is very singular indeed. 
Attached to the southern Pole there is no mass of 
Land which stretches so far north as to enter the 
latitudes which are even moderately temperate. In 
the centre of the Antarctic Circle there is probably a 
great Continent. But-it is a Continent where volcanic 
fires burst here and there through surfaces which are 
bound in perpetual ice r . Round that vast Circle roll 
the continuous waves of an Ocean vexed by furious 
storms, and laden with the gigantic wrecks of 
immeasurable fields and cliffs of ice. In the 
northern hemisphere, round the Arctic Circle, on 
the contrary, everything is different. There Land- 
masses begin, which stretch southward without a 
break through all the temperate and through all 
the torrid zones on both sides of the Equator. 
Then, again, all these great Continents of the 
Globe, as they extend towards the south, become 
narrower and narrower, and so tend to become more 
and more widely separated from each other by 
vast oceanic spaces. Towards the north, on the 
contrary, all these Continents converge, and at one 
point, Behring's Straits, they approach so near each 
other, that only a space of some forty miles of 

sea intervenes between them. The result is, that 

2 c 



402 



The Unity of Nature. 



in the northern hemisphere there is either a con- 
tinued connection by land, or a connection severed 
only by comparatively narrow channels, between all 
the great inhabited Continents of the world. The 
consequences of this, as bearing on the dispersion of 
Mankind, are obvious at a glance. If, for example, 
Man may be supposed to have been born in any 
part of Western or Central Asia, it is easy to see 
how his earliest migrations might lead him without 
serious difficulty into every one of the lands in which 
his children have been actually found. The Indian 
Peninsula was at his feet. A natural bridge, as it 
were, would enable him to penetrate the Arabian 
deserts, and would conduct him by the glorious 
valley of the Nile into the heart of the Continent of 
Africa. Eastwards he had before him the fertile 
tracts of China, and beyond the narrow passage of 
Behring's Straits lay that vast Continent which, when 
re-discovered from the West, was called the New 
World. Again, beyond the southern spurs of the 
great Asiatic Continent there lay an Archipelago 
of magnificent Islands, with comparatively narrow 
Seas between them, and connected by a continuous 
chain with the continental Islands of Australasia. 
The seafaring habits which would spring up among 
an insular population, — especially in an Archipelago 
where every volcanic cone and every coral reef 
rising above the waves was rich in the products of 



The Principal Land-Masses Older than Man. 403 



a bounteous vegetation, — would soon lead to a rapid 
development of the arts of navigation. When these 
were once acquired, there is no difficulty in account- 
ing for the gradual dispersion of the human race 
among the beautiful Islands of the Pacific. Across 
its comparatively peaceful waters it is not improbable 
that even rude navigators may have made their 
way at various times to people the western shores 
of the Continent of America. 

It is true indeed that the science of Geology 
teaches us that the distribution of Sea and Land 
has been immensely various in different epochs of 
the unmeasured ages which have been occupied in 
the formation of our existing world. And it may 
be urged from this that no argument on the 
methods of dispersion can be based with safety 
upon that distribution as it now is. There is not 
much force, however, in this plea. For it is equally 
true that the evidence afforded by Geology is in 
favour of the very great antiquity of the principal 
Land - masses, and of the great Oceanic hollows 
which now divide them. The antiquity of these is 
almost certainly much greater than the antiquity 
of Man. The fauna and the flora of the principal 
Continents indicate them to have been separated 
since a period in the development, or in the creation 
of Species, long anterior to any probable estimate 
of the time of Man's appearance. Even if that 



The Unity of Nature, 



appearance dates from the Miocene epoch in Geo- 
logy, — which is an extreme supposition, — no great 
difference in the problem of the dispersion of our 
species would arise. Since that time indeed it is 
certain that great subsidences and elevations of 
land have taken place. But although these changes 
have greatly altered the outlines of Sea and Land 
along the shores of Europe and of America, there 
is no reason to believe that they could have mate- 
rially affected, either injuriously or otherwise, the 
earlier migrations of Mankind. 

But although the peculiar Physical Geography of 
the Globe makes it easy to understand how, from a 
single centre, it must have been quite possible for 
a creature with the peculiar powers and faculties of 
Man to distribute himself, as he has actually been 
found distributed over every habitable region of the 
world, it is most important to observe the very 
adverse conditions to which, in the course of this 
distribution, particular portions of the human family 
must have been, and to which we do now find them 
actually exposed. 

The "New World" — the American Continent — 
is that which presents the most uninterrupted 
stretch of habitable land from the highest northern 
to the lowest southern latitude. No part of it 
was without human inhabitants when the civilised 
children of the Old World first came upon it, and 



The Natives of Tierra del Fuego. 405 

when, from its mountain tops, they first " stared on 
the Pacific." On its extreme north there was the 
Eskimo or Inuit race, maintaining human life under 
conditions of extremest hardship, even amid the 
perpetual ice of the Polar regions. On the ex- 
treme south — at the opposite extremity of the great 
American Continent — there were the inhabitants of 
Cape Horn and of the Island off it, both of which 
project their desolate rocks into another of the 
most inhospitable climates of the world. Let us 
take this case first — because it is a typical one, and 
because it happens that we have from a master- 
hand a description of these people, and a sugges- 
tion of the questions which they raise. The 
natives of Tierra del Fuego are one of the most 
degraded among the races of Mankind. How 
could they be otherwise ? " Their country," says 
Mr. Darwin, "is a broken mass of wild rocks, lofty 
hills, and useless forests ; and these are viewed 
through mists and endless storms. The habitable 
land is reduced to the stones of the beach. In 
search of food they are compelled to wander un- 
ceasingly from spot to spot ; and so steep is the 
coast that they can only move about in their 
wretched canoes." They are habitual cannibals, 
killing and eating their old women before they kill 
their dogs, for the sufficient reason, as explained 
by themselves, " Doggies catch others : old women, 



406 



The Unity of Nature, 



no." Of some of these people who came round 
the Beagle in their canoes the same author says : 
" These were the most wretched and miserable 
creatures I anywhere beheld. They were quite 
naked, and even one full-grown woman was abso- 
lutely so. It was raining heavily, and the fresh 
water, together with the spray, trickled down her 
body. In another harbour not far distant, a woman 
who was suckling a new-born child, came one day 
alongside the vessel and remained there out of 
mere curiosity, whilst the sleet fell and thawed on 
her naked bosom, and on the skin of her naked 
baby. These poor wretches were stunted in their 
growth, their hideous faces bedaubed with white 
paint, their skins filthy and greasy, their hair 
entangled, their voices discordant, and their gestures 
violent. Viewing such men, one can hardly make 
one's-self believe that they are fellow-creatures and 
inhabitants of the same world." Such are the 
facts, or one aspect of the facts, connected with 
this people. But there are other facts, or another 
aspect of the same facts, not less important which 
we have on the same evidence. Beneath this crust 
of Savagery lay all the perfect attributes of Humanity 
— ready to be developed the moment the unfavour- 
able conditions of Fuegian life were exchanged for 
conditions which were different. Captain Fitzroy 
had, in 1830, carried off some of these poor people 



The Fuegians Immigrants from the North. 407 



to England, where they were taught the arts and 
the habits of Civilisation. Of one of those who 
was taken back to his own country in the Beagle, 
Mr. Darwin tells us that "his intellect was good, 1 ' 
and of another that he had a " nice disposition." 

Let us look now at the questions which the low 
condition of the Fuegians suoforests to Mr. Darwin. 
"Whilst beholding these Savages, one asks whence 
have they come ? What could have tempted, or 
what change compelled, a tribe of men to leave the 
fine regions of the north, to travel down the 
Cordillera or backbone of America, to invent and 
build canoes which are not used by the tribes of 
Chili, Peru, and Brazil, and then to enter one of 
the most inhospitable countries within the limits of 
the Globe?" 

These questions of Mr. Darwin, it will be ob- 
served, assume that Man is not indigenous in 
Tierra del Fuego. They assume that he has come 
from elsewhere into that savage country. They 
assume farther that his access to it has been by 
land. They assume that the progenitors of the 
Fuegians who first came there were not skilled 
navigators like the crew of the Beagle, able to 
traverse the Atlantic or the Pacific in their widest 
and stormiest expanse. These assumptions are 
surely safe. But these being accepted, it follows 
that the ancestors of the Fuegians must have come 



4o3 



The Unity of Nature. 



from the North, and must have passed down the 
whole length, or a great part of the length, of the 
American Continent. In other words, they must 
have come from regions which are highly favoured 
into regions of extremest rigour. If external 
circumstances have any influence upon the con- 
dition of Man, this great change cannot have been 
without effect. Accordingly, Mr. Darwin at once, 
instinctively as it were, connects the utter savagery 
of the Fueoqans with the wretched conditions of 
their present home. " How little," he says, " can 
the higher powers of the mind be brought into 
play ! What is there for imagination to picture, 
for reason to compare, for judgment to decide 
upon." It is in perfect accordance with this view 
that on every side of them, and in proportion as we 
pass northwards from their wretched country, we 
find that the tribes of South America are less 
wretched, and better acquainted with the simpler 
arts. None of the depressing and stupefying con- 
ditions which attach to the present home of the 
Fuegians can be alleged of the regions in which 
some distant ancestors of the Fuegians must have 
lived. In Chili, in Peru, in Brazil, in Mexico, there 
are boundless tracts in which every condition of 
nature, soil, climate, and productions, are compara- 
tively as favourable to men as they are unfavourable 
on the desolate shores of Cape Horn and Tierra del 



Man on the Shores of Baffin? s Bay, 409 



Fuego. Yet one or other of these many weil- 
favoured regions must have been on the line of 
march by which the Fuegian shores were reached. 
One and all of them present attractions which must 
have induced a long encampment, and must have 
made them the home of many generations. Why 
was that march ever resumed, in a direction so un- 
inviting and pursued to a destination so desolate 
and so miserable ? 

But the moment we come to ask this question 
in respect to the Fuegians, we find that it is a 
question which arises equally out of the position 
and life of many other portions of the human 
family. The northern extremity of the American 
Continent presents exactly the same problem as the 
southern. If it is impossible to suppose that Man 
was first created, or born, or developed in Tierra 
del Fuego, it is not less impossible to suppose that 
he made his first appearance on the frozen shores 
of Baffin's Bay. Watching at the blow-hole of a 
Seal for many hours in a temperature 75 below the 
freezing point, is the constant work of the Inuit 
hunter. And when at last his prey is struck, it is 
his greatest luxury to feast upon the raw blood and 
blubber. To civilised Man it is hardly possible to 
conceive a life so wretched, and in some aspects at 
least so brutal, as the life led by this race during 
the continual night of the Arctic winter. Not even 



The Unity of Nature. 



the most extravagant theorist as regards the posr 
sible plurality of human origins can believe that 
there was a separate Eskimo Adam. Man, there- 
fore, is as certainly an immigrant into the dreary 
regions round the Pole as he is an immigrant into 
the desolations of Cape Horn. But the whole 
conditions of his life there are necessarily deter- 
mined by the rigours of the climate. They are 
conditions in which Civilisation, as it has been 
here defined, is impossible. And the importance 
of that definition is singularly apparent in the case 
of the Eskimo. Although essentially uncivilised, 
he is not, in the ordinary sense of the word, a 
Savage. Many of the characteristics usually asso- 
ciated with that word are altogether wanting in 
the Eskimo. They are a gentle, inoffensive, 
hospitable, and truthful race. They are there- 
fore a conspicuous example of the fallacy of 
supposing that there is any necessary connection 
between a backward condition of knowledge in 
the useful arts, and violent dispositions, or fero- 
cious and cruel habits. Men are not necessarily 
savage because they may use flint hatchets, or 
because they may point their arrows and their 
spears with bone. Nevertheless, the condition of 
.the Eskimo, although not savage, is almost the 
type of the merely uncivilised condition of Man- 
kind. It is a condition in which not more than 



The Eskimo Immigrants from the South. 411 



a few families can ever live together, and in which 
therefore large communities cannot be formed. A 
few simple and some very curious rules of owner- 
ship are all that can represent among them the 
great lawgiving instinct which lives in Man. 
Agriculture cannot be practised, nor even the 
pasturing of flocks and herds. Without fuel, 
beyond the oil which feeds their feeble lamps, or 
a few stray logs of drift timber, the Eskimo can 
have no access to the metals, which in such a 
country could not be reduced from their ores, even 
if these ores were themselves obtainable. The 
useful arts are, therefore, strictly limited to the 
devising and making of canoes and of weapons of 
the chase. There is no domestic animal except 
the Dog; and Dogs too, like their masters, must 
have been brought from elsewhere. These are 
all conditions which exclude the first elements of 
what we understand by Civilisation. But every 
one of these conditions must have been different 
with the progenitors of the Eskimo. If they were 
immigrants into the regions within the Arctic 
Circle, they must have come from the more tem- 
perate regions of the South. They must have 
been surrounded there by all the natural advan- 
tages of which their descendants are now deprived. 
To what extent these ancestors of the Eskimo may 
have profited by their very different and more 



412 



The Unity of Nature. 



favoured position, we cannot know. They may 
have practised such simple agriculture as was 
practised by the most ancient races which have left 
their traces in the Swiss Lake dwellings. They 
may have been nomads, living on their flocks and 
herds, as the Laplanders and Siberians actually are 
who in the Old World live in latitudes only a little 
farther South. They may have been people who, 
like the ancient but unknown Mound-builders in 
the Southern and Western States of America, had 
developed a comparatively high civilisation. But 
one thing is certain, that they must have lived a life 
wholly different from the life of the Eskimo, and 
that they must have had completely different habits. 
Whatever arts the fathers knew, suited to more 
genial climates, could not fail to be forgotten by 
the children, in a country where the practice of them 
was impossible. 

The same question, therefore, which Darwin 
asks in respect to the inhabitants of the extreme 
south of the American Continent, arises in respect 
to the inhabitants of its extreme north — What can 
have induced any people to travel along that Con- 
tinent in a direction more and more inhospitable, 
and at last to settle in a country where nearly one- 
half the year is night, and where, even during the 
short summer, both Sea and Land are mainly occu- 
pied by ice and snow? 



Man on the African Continent, 



4'3 



But, again, we are reminded that there are other 
cases of a similar kind. The African Continent 
does not extend so far south as to reach a severe 
southern latitude. In that Continent, accordingly, 
beyond the frequent occurrence of deserts, there is 
nothing seriously to impede the migrations of Man 
from its northern towards its southern extremity ; 
nor is there anything there to subject them when 
they had reached it to the worst conditions. 
Accordingly we do not find that the predominant 
native races of Southern Africa rank low in the 
scale of humanity. Those among them, however, 
which are or were the lowest in that scale, were 
precisely thpse who occupied the most unfavourable 
portion of the country and are known as Bushmen. 
Of these it is well ascertained that they are not 
a distinct race, but of kindred origin with the 
Hottentots, who were by no means so degraded. 
On the whole, therefore, the question how men 
could ever have been induced to live where we 
actually find them, does not press for an answer so 
much in respect to any part of the Continent of 
Africa, with the exception of a few tribes whose 
present habitat is exceptionally unfavourable. 

There is, however, another case of difficulty in 
respect to the distribution of Mankind, which in 
some respects is even more remarkable than the 
case of the Fnegians, or the case of the Eskimo. 



4H. 



The Unity of Nature. 



We have seen that the great Asiatic Continent, 
though it does not itself extend beyond latitudes 
which are favourable to human settlement, is prac- 
tically prolonged through a continuous chain of 
Islands into the regions of Australasia. Every part 
of those regions was found to be inhabited when 
they were discovered by civilised Man ; and it is 
universally admitted that the natives of Australia, 
and the natives of Tasmania, are or were (for the 
Tasmanians are now extinct) among the very lowest 
of all the families of Man. Now the physical con- 
ditions of the great Islands of Australasia are in 
many respects the most remarkable on the surface 
of the Globe. Their peculiar fauna and flora prove 
them to be of great antiquity as Islands in the 
geological history of the Earth. That is to say — 
their beasts, and their birds, and their vegetation 
are so widely separate from those of all other 
regions, that during long ages of the total time 
which has elapsed since they first appeared above 
the Ocean, they must have been as separate as they 
are now from all other habitable lands. Their 
beasts are, indeed, related — closely related — to 
Forms which have existed during certain epochs in 
many other portions of the Earth's surface. But 
those epochs are so distant, that we are carried back 
in our search for creatures like them to the times of 
the Secondary Rocks — to the horizon of the Oolite. 



The Fauna of Australasia, 415 



Speaking of the poverty and of the extremely 
isolated character of the Australian Mammalia, 
Mr. Wallace says : " This class affords us the most 
certain proofs that no part of the country has been 
united to the Asiatic continent since the latter part 
of the Mesozoic period of geology." * Of the vast 
series of creatures which elsewhere have been 
created, or born, or developed, since that epoch, 
including all the higher members of the Mammalian 
Class, not one existed in Australasia until they were 
introduced by Europeans. Among the grasses 
there were none which by cultivation^ could be 
developed into Cereals. Among the beasts there 
was not one which was capable of domestica- 
tion. There were no Apes or Monkeys ; no Oxen, 
Antelopes, or Deer ; no Elephants, Rhinoceroses, or 
Pigs ; no Cats, Wolves, or Bears ; none even of the 
smaller Civets or Weasels ; no Hedgehogs or Shrews; 
no Hares, Squirrels, or Porcupines, or Dormice." t 
There was not even a native Dog; and the only 
approach to, or representative of, that wonderful 
animal, was a low Marsupial beast, which is a mere 
biting machine, incapable of affection for a master, 
and incapable even of recognising the hand that feeds 
it. In the whole of Australia, with the exception of 
a few Mice, there was not one single Mammal which 
did not belong to this low Marsupial Class, whilst 

* Australasia, by Alfred R. Wallace, p. 51. t Ibid. 



416 



The Unity of N attire. 



some others belonged to a class still lower in the 
scale of organisation, the class called Monotremita* 
Strange Forms astonished our first explorers, such 
as the Ornithorhynchus and the Echidna — Forms 
which combined features elsewhere widely separated 
in the animal kingdom — the bills of Birds, the spines 
of Porcupines, the fur of Otters, and the feet of 
Moles. Nothing analogous to these relics of an 
extinct fauna had been known to survive in any 
other part of the world. 

Yet in the midst of this strange assemblage 
of creatures, without any representative of the 
animals which elsewhere surround him, the familiar 
Form of Man was found, low, indeed, in his con- 
dition, but with all the inalienable characteristics 
of his race. It is true, that everywhere the gap 
which separates Man from the lower animals is 
enormous. Nothing: bridges, or comes near to 
bridging it. It is a gap which has been well called 
a gulf. But in Australasia the breadth and depth 
of this gulf is rendered more conspicuous by the 
association of Man with a series of animals absolutely 
wantino- in those hieher members of the Mammalian 
Class which elsewhere minister to his wants, and the 
use of which is among the first elements of a civilised 
condition. Alone everywhere, and separate from 
other Beings, Man is most conspicuously alone in 
those strange and distant lands where his high 



Man not Indigenous in Aicstralasia. 417 

Organisation is in contact with nothing nearer to 
itself than the low Marsupial brain. 

To those who connect the origin of Man with 
the theory of Development or Evolution, in any 
shape or in any form, these peculiar circumstances 
respecting the fauna of Australasia indicate beyond 
all doubt that Man is not there indigenous. They 
stamp him as an immigrant in those regions — a 
wanderer from other lands. Nor will this conclu- 
sion be less assuredly held by those who believe 
that in some special sense Man has been created. 
There is something more than an incongruity in 
supposing that there was a separate Tasmanian 
Adam. The belief that the creation of Man has 
been a special work is not inconsistent with the 
belief that in the time, and in the circumstances, 
and in the method of this work, it had a ' definite 
relation to the previous course and history of 
Creation— so that Man did not appear until all 
these lower animals had been born, which were 
destined to minister to his necessities, and to afford 
him the means and opportunities for that kind of 
development which is peculiarly his own. On the 
contrary, this doctrine of the previous creation of 
the lower animals, which is, perhaps, more firmly 
established on the facts of science than any other 
respecting the origin of Man, is a doctrine fitting 

closely into the fundamental conceptions which 

2 D 



4i8 



The Unity of Nature. 



inspire the belief that Man has been produced by 
operations as exceptional as their result. And so it 
is, that when we see men inhabiting lands destitute 
of all the higher Mammalia, which are elsewhere his 
servants or companions — destitute even of those 
productions of the vegetable kingdom, which alone 
repay the cultivation of the soil, we conclude with 
certainty that he is there a wanderer from some 
distant lands, where the work of creation had been 
carried farther, and where the provisions of sur- * 
rounding Nature were such as to afford him the 
conditions of a home. 

We see, then, that the question asked by Mr. 
Darwin, in respect to the Fuegians, is a question 
arising equally in respect to all the races who 
inhabit regions of the Globe, which from any cause 
present conditions highly unfavourable to Man. 
Just as Mr. Darwin asked, what could have in- 
duced tribes to travel down the American Continent 
to a climate so rigorous as Cape Horn ? — just as we 
have asked, on the same principle, what could have 
induced men to travel along the same Continent in 
an opposite direction till they reached and settled 
within the Arctic Circle ? — so now we have to ask, 
what could have induced men to travel from 
Asia, or from the rich and splendid Islands of the 
Eastern Archipelago, and to take up their abode in 
Australasia ? 



Australian a Degenerate Offshoot of the 'Race. 419 



In every one of these cases the change has been 
greatly for the worse. It has been a change not 
only involving comparative disadvantages, but 
positive disabilities — affecting the fundamental 
elements of Civilisation, and subjecting those who 
underwent that change to deteriorating influences 
of the most powerful kind. 

It follows from these considerations as a neces- 
sary consequence that the present condition of the 
Australian, or the recent condition of the Tasmanian, 
cannot possibly be any trustworthy indication of 
the condition of their ancestors, when thev lived 
in more favoured regions. The same argument 
applies to them which, as we have seen, applies to 
the Fuegians and the Eskimo. If all these families 
of Mankind are the descendants of men, who at 
some former time inhabited countries wholly dif- 
ferent in climate, and in productions, and in all the 
facilities which these afford for the development 
of the special faculties of the race, it is in the 
highest degree improbable that a change of habitat 
so great should have been without a corresponding 
effect upon those over whom it passed. Nor is it a 
matter of doubt or mere speculation that this effect 
must have been in the highest degree unfavourable. 
The conclusion, therefore, to which we are led is, 
that such races as those which inhabit Australasia, 
are indeed the results of Development, or of Evolu- 



420 



The Unity of Nature. 



tion — but of the development of unfavourable con- 
ditions, and of the evolution of the natural effects of 
these. Instead of assuming them to be the nearest 
living representatives of Primeval Man, we should 
be more safe in assuming them to represent the 
widest departure from that earliest condition of our 
race which, on the theory of Development, must of 
necessity have been associated at first with the most 
highly favourable conditions of external Nature. 

Of one thing, at least, we may be tolerably 
certain respecting the causes which have led to 
this extreme dispersion of Mankind to inhospitable 
regions, at a vast distance from any possible centre 
of their birth. The first Fuegian was not impelled 
to Cape Horn by the same motives which impelled 
Mr. Darwin to visit that country in the Beagle, 
The first Eskimo, who wintered on the shores of 
Baffin's Bay, was not induced to do so for the 
same reasons which led to the expeditions of Back, 
of Franklin, or of Rae. The first inhabitants of 
Australasia did not voyage there under conditions 
similar to those which attended the voyages of 
Tasman or of Cook. We cannot suppose that 
those distant shores were first colonised by men 
possessed with the genius, and far advanced in the 
triumphs of modern Civilisation. Still less can we 
suppose that they went there under the influence of 
that last development of Man's intellectual nature, 



Immigrations that are Easy to Account for. 421 



which leads him to endure almost any suffering in 
the cause of purely scientific investigation. 

Nor is this the only solution of the difficulty 
which seems to be absolutely excluded by the cir- 
cumstances of the case. Within the historical 
period, and in the dim centuries which lie imme- 
diately beyond it, we know that many lands have 
been occupied by conquering races coming from a 
distance. Sometimes they came to subdue tribes 
which had long preceded them in occupation, but 
which were ruder, as well as weaker, than them- 
selves. Sometimes, as in the case of the northern 
nations bursting in upon the Roman Empire, they 
came to overthrow a Civilisation which had once 
been, and in many ways still was, much higher than 
their own, but which the progress of development 
in a wrong direction had sunk in degradation and 
decay. Sometimes they came simply to colonise 
new lands, at least as favoured, and generally much 
more favoured, than their own — bringing with them 
all the resources of which they were possessed — 
their flocks and herds, their women and children, 
as well as their warriors with chariots and horses. 
Such was the case with some of those nations which 
at various times have held their sway from Central 
Asia into Eastern and Central Europe. They 
were nations on the march. But no movement of 
a like kind has taken place for many centuries. 



422 



The Unity of Nature. 



Lastly, we have the emigrations of our own day, 
when civilised men, carrying with them all the know- 
ledge, all the requirements, and all the materials 
of an advanced Civilisation, have landed in countries 
which by means of these could be made fit for settle- 
ment, and could be converted into the seats of 
agriculture and of commerce. 

Not one of these cases can reasonably be sup- 
posed to have been the case of the first arrival of 
Man in Australasia. The natural disadvantages of 
the country, as compared with the richness and 
abundance of the regions from which he must have 
come, or which were on his southward line of 
march, preclude the supposition that men were 
attracted to it by natural objects of desire. We 
know by experience that if the first settlers had been 
in a condition to bring with them the higher animals 
which abound in Asia, these animals would have 
flourished in Australia as they now do. And so 
also, with reference to the Cereals — if these had 
ever been introduced, the modern Australians 
would not have been wholly without them, and 
would not have been compelled to live so much on 
the lowest kinds of animal and vegetable food,— on 
fish, lizards, grubs, snakes, and the roots of ferns. 

There is, however, one answer to Mr. Darwin's 
question, which satisfies all the conditions of the 
case. There is one explanation, and only one, of 



Remote Dispersions Accounted for. 423 



the dispersion of the human race to the uttermost 
extremities of the habitable Globe. The secret lies 
in that great law which Malthus was the first to 
observe and to establish — the law, namely, that 
population is always pressing on the limits of sub- 
sistence. There is a constant tendency to multipli- 
cation beyond those limits. And, among the many 
consequences of this tendency, the necessity of dis- 
persion stands first and foremost. It is true, indeed, 
that under some conditions, such as those which 
have been already indicated, the most energetic 
races, or the most energetic individuals, have been 
those who moved. But under many other condi- 
tions the advantage has been in favour of those who 
stayed. Quarrels and wars between tribe and tribe, 
induced by the mere increase of numbers, and by 
consequent pressure upon the means of living, have 
been always, ever since Man existed, driving the 
weaker individuals and the weaker families farther 
and farther from the original settlements of Man- 
kind. 

Then one great argument remains. In the nature 
of things the original settlements of Man must of 
necessity have been the most highly favoured in the 
conditions he requires. If, on the commonly re- 
ceived theory of Development, those conditions pro- 
duced him, they must have reached, at the time 
when, and in the place where he arose, the very 



424 



The Unity of Nature. 



highest degree of perfect adaptation. He must 
have been happy in the circumstances in which he 
found himself placed, and presumably he must have 
been contented to remain there. Equally on the 
theory of Man being a special creation, we must 
suppose that when weakest and most ignorant he 
must have been placed in what was to him a 
garden — that is to say, in some region where the 
fruits of the Earth were abundant and easily 
accessible. Whether this region were wide or 
narrow, he would not naturally leave it except 
from necessity. On every possible supposition, 
therefore, as to the origin of Man, those who in 
the dispersion of the race were first subjected to 
iiard and unfavourable conditions would naturally 
be those who had least strength to meet them, 
and upon whom they would have accordingly the 
most depressing effect. This is a process of Natural 
Rejection which is the inseparable correlative of the 
process of Natural Selection. It tends to develop- 
ment in a wrong direction by the combined action 
of two different circumstances which are inherent 
in the nature of the case. First, it must be always 
the weaker men who are driven out from com- 
fortable homes ; and, secondly, it must be always 
to comparatively unfavourable regions that they 
are compelled to fly. Under the operation of 
causes so combined as these, it would be strange, 



« 



Degradation Due to External Circumstances. 425 



indeed, if the physical and mental condition of the 
tribes which have been exposed to them should 
remain unchanged. It is true, indeed, that adverse 
conditions, if they be not too severe, may develop 
energy, and result in the establishment of races of 
special hardihood. And in many cases this has been 
the actual result. But, on the other hand, if physical 
conditions be as insuperable as those which prevail 
in Tierra del Fuego or in Baffin's Bay ; or if, 
though less severe than these, they are neverthe- 
less too hard to be overcome by the resources at 
the disposal of the men who are driven to en- 
counter them, then the battle of life becomes a 
losing one. Under such circumstances, degrada- 
tion is unavoidable. As surely as the progress of 
Man is the result of Opportunity, that is to say, as 
surely as it is due to the working of his faculties 
under stimulating and favouring conditions, so 
surely must he descend in the scale of Intelligence 
and of culture, when that opportunity is taken from 
him, and when these faculties are placed under 
conditions where they have no call to work. 

It is, then, easy to see some at least of the 
external circumstances which, first, in the natural 
course of things, would bring an adverse influence 
to bear upon Mankind. Here we are on firm 
ground, because we know the law from which 
comes the necessity of migrations, and the force 



4 2 6 The Unity of 'Nature. 

which has propelled successive generations of men 
farther and farther in ever- widening circles round 
the original centre or centres of their birth. Then, 
as it would be always the feebler tribes which 
would be driven from the ground which has be- 
come overstocked, and as the lands to which they 
went forth were less and less hospitable in climate 
and productions, the struggle for life would be 
always harder. And so it would generally happen, 
in the natural course of things, that the races which 
were driven farthest would become the rudest and 
the most engrossed in the pursuits of mere animal 
existence. 

Accordingly, we find that this key of principle 
fits into and explains many of those facts in the 
distribution and condition of Mankind, which, in 
the case of the Fuegians, excited the wonder and 
curiosity of Darwin. In the light of this expla- 
nation, these facts seem to take form and order. 
It is a fact that the lowest and rudest tribes in the 
population of the Globe have been found, as we 
have seen, at the farthest extremities of its larger 
Continents, or in the distant Islands of its great 
Oceans, or among the hills and forests which in 
every land have been the last refuge of the victims 
of violence and misfortune. Those extreme points 
of land which in both hemispheres extend into 
severe latitudes are not the only portions of the 



Man in Tropical America, 427 

Globe which are highly unfavourable to Man. 
There are other regions quite as bad, if not, in 
some respects, even worse. In the dense, uniform, 
and gloomy forests of the Amazon and Orinoco 
there are tribes which seem to be amone the lowest 
in the world. It cannot be unconnected with the 
savagery of the condition to which they have been 
reduced that we find the remarkable fact that all 
those regions of Tropical America are wholly want- 
ing in the animals which are capable of domestica- 
tion, and which are inseparable from the earliest 
traces of human culture. The Ox, the Horse, and 
the Sheep are all absent — even as regards the 
genera to which they belong. There are indeed the 
Tapir, the Paca, and the Curassow Turkey, and all 
these are animals which can be tamed. But none of 
them will breed in confinement, and the races can- 
not be established as useful servants of Mankind. 
In contrast with these and with other insuperable 
disadvantages of men driven into the forests of 
Tropical America, it is instructive to observe that the 
same races, where free from these disadvantages, 
were never reduced to the same condition. In Peru 
the Indian races had the Llama, and had also an 
advanced Civilisation.** In India, too, it is always 
the Hill Tribes who furnish the least favourable 
specimens of our race. But in every one of these 

* "Naturalist on the Amazons," Bates, vol. i. p. 191 -3. 



428 



The Unity of N attire. 



cases we have the presence of external circumstances 
and physical conditions which are comparatively un- 
favourable. It is quite certain that these conditions 
must have had their own effect. It is equally 
certain that the races which have been subject to 
them for a lone and indefinite time must have been 
once under the influence of conditions much more 
favourable ; and the inevitable conclusion follows, 
that the savagery and degradation of their existing 
state is to a great extent the result of development 
in a wrong direction. 

There are other arguments all pointing the same 
way, the force of which cannot be fully estimated, 
except by those who are familiar with some of the 
fundamental conceptions which seem to rise un- 
bidden in the mind from the facts which geology 
has revealed touching the history of Creation. One 
of these facts is that each new Organic Form, or 
each new variety of birth, seems always to have been 
introduced with a wonderful energy of life. It is 
needless to repeat that this fact stands in close con- 
nection with every possible theory of Evolution. 
If these new Forms were the product of favouring 
conditions, the prevalence of these conditions would 
start them with force upon their way. The initial 
energy would be great. Where every condition 
was favourable — so favourable indeed that the new 
birth is assumed to have been nothing but their 



Weaknesses of the Lowest Races of Man. 429 



natural result — then the newly-born would be strong 
and lusty. And such, accordingly, Is the fact in 
that record of Evolution or of Creation which 
Palaeontology affords. The vigour which prevails 
in the youth of an individual is but the type of the 
vigour which has always prevailed in new and rising 
species. All the complex influences which led to 
their being born, led also to their being fat and 
flourishing. That which caused them to arise at all 
must have had the effect of causing them to arise in 
strength. The condition of all the lowest races of 
men is in absolute contrast with everything which 
this law demands. Everywhere, and in everything, 
they exhibit all the characteristics of an energy 
which is spent — of a force which has declined — of 
a vitality which has been arrested. In numbers 
they are stationary, or dwindling ; in mind they are 
feeble and uninventive ; in habits they are stupid or 
positively suicidal. 

It is another symptom of a wrong development 
being" the real secret of their condition that the 
lowest of them seem to have lost even the power to 
rise. Though individually capable of learning what 
civilised men have taught them, yet as races they 
have been invariably scorched by the light of Civili- 
sation, and have withered before it like a plant 
whose roots have failed. The power of assimilation 
seems to have departed, as it always does depart 



430 



The Unity of Nature. 



from an Organism which is worn out. This has 
not been the result with races which, though very 
barbarous, have never sunk below the pastoral or 
the agricultural stage. It is remarkable that the 
Indian races of North America are perhaps the 
highest which have exhibited this fatal and irre- 
deemable incapacity to rise : and it is precisely in 
their case that we have the most direct evidence 
of degradation by development in a wrong direc- 
tion. There are abundant remains of a very 
ancient American Civilisation, which was marked 
by the construction of great public works and 
by the development of an agriculture founded 
on the Maize, which is a cereal indigenous to the 
Continent of America. This Civilisation was subse- 
quently destroyed or lost, and then succeeded a 
period in which Man relapsed into partial barbarism. 
The spots which had been first forest, then, perhaps, 
sacred monuments, and thirdly, cultivated ground, 
relapsed into forest once more.* So strong is this 
evidence of degradation having affected the popula- 
tion of a great part of the American Continent, that 
the distinguished author from whom these words 
are quoted, and who generally represents the 
Savage as the nearest living representative of 
primeval Man, is obliged to ask, " What fatal cause 
destroyed this earlier civilisation ? Why were these 

* Lubbock, " Prehistoric Times," p. 234. 



Development in the Wrong Direction. 43 1 



fortifications forsaken- — these cities in ruins? How 
were the populous nations which once inhabited the 
rich American valleys reduced to the poor tribes of 
savages whom the European found there ? Did 
the North and South once before rise up in arms 
against one another ? Did the terrible appellation, 
the ' Dark and Bloody Land,' applied to Kentucky, 
commemorate these ancient wars ? " * Whatever 
may have been the original cause, the process of 
degradation has been going on within the historic 
period. When Europeans first came in contact 
with the Indian tribes, there was more agriculture 
among them than there is now. They have long 
descended to the condition of pure hunters. The 
most fundamental of all the elements of a civilised 
and settled life — the love and practice of agriculture 
— has been lost. Development in the wrong 
direction had done its work. There is no insoluble 
mystery in this result. It is, in all probability, if 
indeed it be not certainly, attributable to one cause, 
that of internecine and devastating wars. And 
these again are the result of a natural and universal 
instinct which has its own legitimate fields of opera- 
tion, but which like all other human instincts is 
liable to degenerate into a destructive passion. 
The love of dominion is strong in all men, and 
it has ever been strongest in the strongest races. 

* Lubbock, " Prehistoric Times," p. 236. 



432 



The Unity of Nature. 



But the love of fighting and of conquest very often 
sinks into a mere lust of blood. The natural 
rivalry of different communities may become such 
implacable hatred as to be satisfied with nothing 
short of the extermination of an enemy. Inspired 
by this passion, particular races or tribes have some- 
times acquired a power and a ferocity in fighting, 
against which other tribes of a much higher 
character and of a much more advanced civilisation 
have been unable to contend. 

This is no fancy picture. It is a mistake to sup- 
pose that the decline of Civilisation in the American 
Continent has been due to the invasion of it by 
Europeans since the discovery of Columbus. Just 
as the older civilisation of that Continent was an 
indigenous Civilisation founded on the cultivation 
of a cereal peculiar to America, so also does 
the decay and loss of this Civilisation seem to 
have been a purely indigenous decay. Mr. Wilson, 
in his very interesting work on " Prehistoric Man,"" 
gives an account of the process by which barbarism 
has been actually seen extending among the Red 
Indian tribes. When the valley of the St. Law- 
rence first came under the observation of Europeans, 
some of those tribes were found to be leading a 
settled life, practising agriculture, and constituting 
communities in possession of all the elements of a 
Civilisation fairly begun, or probably long inherited. 



A Significant Red Indian Myth. 



The destruction of these communities was effected 
by the savage hostility of one or two particular 
tribes, such as the Iriquois and the Mohawks. In 
these tribes the lust of blood had been developed 
into an absorbing passion, so that their very name 
became a terror and a scourge. Wholly given up 
to war as a pursuit, their path was red with blood, 
and the more peaceful and civilised branches of the 
same stock were driven, a scanty remnant, into 
forests and marshes, where their condition was 
necessarily reduced to that of Savages, living wholly 
by the chase. It is a curious and instructive fact 
that this sequence of events was so vividly and 
painfully remembered among some of the Red 
Indian tribes that it had become embodied in a 
religious mvth. It was said that in old times the 
Indians were increasing so fast that they were 
threatened with want, and that the Great Spirit 
then taught them to make war, and thus to thin 
one another's numbers.* Although this myth 
stands in very close connection with the universal 
tradition of a Golden Age, or of a Past in some 
measure better than the Present, it is remarkable 
on account of the specific cause which he assigns for 
deterioration and decay, a cause in respect to which 
we have historical evidence of its actual effects. 
When the great French navigator, Cartier, 

* "Fossil Men," Principal Dawson, p. 47. Montreal, 1S80. 

2 E 



434 



The Unity of Nature. 



first explored the St. Lawrence in 1534-35, he as- 
cended to that point of its course whence the City of 
Montreal now looks down upon its vast and splendid 
prospect of fertile lands and of rushing waters. 
He found it occupied by the Indian town of Hoche- 
laga — inhabited by a comparatively civilised people, 
busy not only in fishing or in hunting, but also in 
a successful husbandry. The town was strongly 
fortified, and it was surrounded by cultivated 
ground. Within one hundred and seven years — 
some time between 1535 and 1642 — Hochelaga 
had utterly disappeared, with all its population, and 
all its culture. It had been destroyed by wars, and 
its site had returned to forest or to bush. To this 
day when men dig: the foundations of new houses 
in Montreal they dig up the flint implements of the 
Hochelagans, which, although about 350 years old, 
may now be reckoned by the scientific anthro- 
pologist as relics of the " Stone Age," * and of an 
ancient universal savagery. The same course of 
things prevailed over the greater part of Canada. 
During the first half of the seventeenth century a 
large part of the valley of the St. Lawrence, and 
vast tracts of country on both shores of the great 
Lakes, are known to have been devastated by 
exterminating wars. In 1626 a Jesuit missionary 
penetrated into the settlement of a tribe called the 

* "Fossil Men," Principal Dawson, pp. 29-42. Montreal, 1880. 



War one Catise of Degradation. 435 



Attiwenderonks. He found them inhabiting towns 
and villages, and largely cultivating Tobacco, Maize, 
and Beans. The country inhabited by the tribe 
which has left its name in Lake Erie, is stated to 
have been greatly more extensive, and is every- 
where covered with the marks of a similar stage of 
civilisation. Within less than thirty years later 
another missionary found the whole of the regions 
a silent desert. In like manner the country round 
Lake Huron was, at the same period of time, seen 
to be full of populous villages defended by walls, and 
surrounded by cultivated fields. But the same fate 
befell them.* They were extirpated by the Mohawks. 

Here then we see in actual operation, within very 
recent times, a true cause — which is quite capable 
of producing the effects which, by some means or 
another, have certainly been produced — and that, 
too, on the largest scale — upon the American Con- 
tinent. It is a cause arising out of the corruption 
of human nature, that is to say, out of one of the 
universal instincts of Mankind, developed in such 
excess as to become a destructive mania. Many 
nations most highly civilised have been extremely 
warlike — and the ambition they have cherished of 
subduing other nations has been the means of 
extending over the world their own knowledge of 
the arts of government, and their own high attain- 

* "Prehistoric Man," Dan. Wilson, pp. 359-60. 



436 



The Unity of Nature, 



ments in the science of jurisprudence. ' But when 
the same passion takes possession of ruder men, 
and is directed by irrational antipathies between 
rival families and rival tribes, it may be, and has 
often been, one of the most desolating scourges of 
humanity. In itself an abuse and a degradation 
which none of the lower animals exhibit, it tends 
always to the evolution of further evils, to the com- 
plete destruction of civilised communities, or to the 
reduction of their scanty remnants to the condition 
and the habits of savage life. 

It results from these facts and considerations, 
gathered over a wide field of observation and 
experience, that the processes of Evolution and 
Development as they work in Man, lead to conse- 
quences wholly different from those to which they 
lead in other departments of Creation. There, 
they tend always in one of two directions, both 
of which are directions predetermined and in per- 
fect harmony with the Unity of Nature. One of 
these directions is that of perfect success, the other 
of these directions is that of speedy extinction. 
Among the lower animals, when a new Form 
appears, it suits exactly its surrounding conditions ; 
and when it ceases to do so it ceases to survive. 
Or if it does survive it lives by change, by giving 
birth to something new, and by ceasing to be 
identical with its former self. So far as we can 



Reason itself a Catise of Degradation. 437 

actually see the past work of Development among the 
beasts, it is a work which has always led either to rapid 
multiplication or to rapid extinction. There is no 
alternative. But in Man the processes of Evolution 
lead in a great variety of directions — some of them 
tending more or less directly to the elevation of the 
creature, but others of them tending very speedily 
and very powerfully to its degradation. In some 
men they have led to an intellectual and moral 
standing, of which we can conceive it to be true 
that it is only a " little lower than the Angels." 
In others they have ended in a condition of which 
it is too evidently true that it is a great deal lower 
than the condition of the Beasts. 

We can get, however, a great deal nearer 
towards the understanding of this anomaly than the 
mere recognition of it as a fact. Hitherto we have 
been dealing only with one of the two great causes 
of change — namely, that of unfavourable external 
or physical conditions. Let us now look at the 
other — namely, the internal nature and character of 
Man. We can see how it is that, when working 
under certain conditions, the peculiar powers of Man 
must lead to endless developments in a wrong direc- 
tion. Foremost among these powers is the gift of 
Reason. I speak here of Reason not as the word 
is often used, to express a great variety of powers, 
but as applied to the logical Faculty alone. In this 



438 



The Unity of Nature. 



restricted sense, the gift of Reason is nothing more 
than the gift of seeing the necessity or the natural 
consequences of things — whether these be things 
said or things done. It is the Faculty by which, 
consciously or unconsciously, we go through the 
mental process expressed in the word " therefore." 
It is the Faculty which confers on us a true gift 
of Prophecy — the power of foreseeing that which 
" must shortly come to pass." In its practical appli- 
cation to conduct, and to the affairs of life, it is the 
gift by which we see the means which will secure 
for us certain ends, whether these ends be the 
getting of that which we desire, or the avoiding of 
that which we dread. But in its root, and in its 
essence, as well as in its application to the abstract 
reasoning of mathematics, it is simply the faculty 
by which we see one proposition as involving, or 
as following from another. 

The power of such a Faculty obviously must be, 
as it actually is, immeasurable and inexhaustible, be- 
cause there is no limit to this kind of following-. That 
is to say, there is no end to the number of things 
which are the consequence of each other. Whatever 
happens in the world is the result of causes, moral 
or material, which have gone before, and this result 
again becomes the cause of other consequences, 
moral or material, which must follow in their turn. 
It is a necessary result of the Unity of Nature, and 



The Lines on which Reason Moves. 



439 



of the Continuity of things, that the links of conse- 
quence are the links of an endless chain. It is the 
business of Reason to see these links as they come 
one by one gradually into view ; and it is in the 
nature of a reasoning creature to be drawn along by 
them in the line, whatever it may be, which is the 
line of their direction. The distance which may be 
traversed in following that direction even for a 
short time, and by a single mind, is often very great 
— so great that a man may be, and often is, a 
different Being from himself, both in opinions and 
in conduct, at two different epochs of his life. 
There are, indeed, individuals, and there are times 
and conditions of society, in which thought is com- 
paratively stagnant, when it travels nowhere, or 
when its movements are so slow and gradual as to 
be imperceptible. But, on the other hand, there 
are times when Mind is on the march. And then 
it travels fast and far. The journey is immense 
indeed, which may be accomplished by a few succes- 
sive generations of men following, one after the 
other, the links of consequence. At the end of such 
a journey, the children may be separated from their 
fathers by more than the breadth of Oceans. They 
may have passed into new regions of thought and 
of opinion, of habit and of worship. If the move- 
ment has been slow, and if the time occupied has 
been long, it will be all the more difficult to retrace 



44° 



The Unity of Nature. 



the steps by which the change has been brought 
about. It will appear more absolute and complete 
than it really is — the new regions of thought being 
in truth connected with the old by a well-beaten and 
continuous track. 

But these endless processes of Development 
arising out of the operation of the Reasoning Faculty, 
are consistent with any result — good or bad. 
Whether the great changes they produce have 
been for the better or for the worse, must depend, 
not on the length of the journey, but on the original 
direction in which it was begun. It depends on 
whether that direction has been right or wrong — 
on whether the road taken has been the logical 
development of a truth, or the logical development 
of a lie. The one has a train of consequences as 
long and as endless as the other. It is the nature of 
the Reasoning Faculty that it works from data. But 
these data are supplied to it from many different 
sources. In the processes of reasoning on which 
the abstract sciences depend, the fundamental data 
are axioms or self-evident propositions. These 
may, in a sense, be said to be supplied by the 
Reasoning Faculty itself, because the recognition of 
a truth as self-evident is in itself an exercise of the 
Reasoning Faculty. But in all branches of know- 
ledge, other than the abstract sciences, that is to 
say, in every department of thought which most 



The Downward Developments of Reason. 441 



nearly concerns our conduct and our beliefs, the 
data on which Reason has to work are supplied to 
it from sources external to itself. In matters of 
Belief, they come, for the most part, from Authority, 
in some one or other of its many forms, or from 
Imagination working according to its own laws 
upon impressions received from the external world. 
In matters of conduct, the data supplied to Reason 
come from all the innumerable motives which are 
founded on the desires. But in all these different 
provinces of thought it is the tendency and the 
work of Reason to follow the proposition, or the 
belief, or the motive, to all its consequences. 
Unless, therefore, the proposition is really as true 
as it seems to be ; unless the belief is really accord- 
ing to' the fact; unless the motive is really legiti- 
mate and 2food, it is the necessarv effect of the 
logical Faculty to carry men farther and farther into 
the paths of error, until it lands them in depths of 
degradation and corruption of which unreasoning 
creatures are incapable. 

It is astonishing how reasonable — that is to say, 
how logical — are even the most revolting prac- 
tices connected, for example, with religious wor- 
ship or religious customs, provided we accept as 
true some fundamental conception of which they 
are the natural result. If it be true that the God 
we worship is a Being who delights in suffer- 
ing, and takes pleasure, as it were, in the very 



442 



The Unity of Nature. 



smell of blood, then it is not irrational to appease 
Him with hecatombs of human victims. This is an 
extreme case. There are, however, such cases, as 
we know, actually existing in the world. But, short 
of this, the same principle is illustrated in innumer- 
able cases, where cruel and apparently irrational 
customs are in reality nothing but the logical conse- 
quences of some fundamental Belief respecting the 
nature, the character, and the commands of God. 
In like manner, in the region of morals and of con- 
duct not directly connected with religious Beliefs, 
Reason may be nothing but the servant of Desire, 
and in this service may have no other work to do 
than that of devising means to the most wicked 
ends. If the doctrine given to Reason be the 

o 

doctrine that pleasure and self-indulgence, at what- 
ever sacrifice to others, are the great aims and ends 
of life, then Reason will be busy in seeking out 
" many inventions " for the attainment of them, each 
invention being more advanced than another in its 
defiance of all Obligation and in its abandonment of 
all sense of duty. Thus the development of selfish- 
ness under the guidance of faculties which place at 
its command the great powers of foresight and con- 
trivance, is a kind of development quite as natural 
and quite as common as that which constitutes the 
growth of knowledge and of virtue. It is indeed a 
development which, under the condition supposed — 



Self- Rectifying Power of Reason in Physics, 443 

that is to say, the condition of false or erroneous 
data supplied to the Reasoning Faculty — is not an 
accident or a contingency, but a necessary and 
inevitable result. 

And here there is one very curious circumstance 
to be observed, which brings us still closer to the 
real seat of the anomaly which makes Man in so 
many ways the one great exception to the Order of 
Nature. That circumstance is the helplessness of 
mere Reason to correct the kind of error which is 
most powerful in vitiating conduct. In those pro- 
cesses of abstract Reason which are the great 
instruments of work in the exact sciences, the 
Reasoning Faculty has the power of very soon detect- 
ing any element of error in the data from which it 
starts. That any given proposition leads to an 
absurd result, is one of the familiar methods of 
disproof in mathematics. That one of only two pos- 
sible alternatives is proved to be absurd, is conclu- 
sive demonstration that the other must be true. In 
this way Reason corrects her own operations, for 
the Faculty which recognises one proposition as evi- 
dently absurd, is the same Faculty which recognises 
another proposition as evidently true. It is, indeed, 
because of its contradicting something evidently 
true, or something which has been already proved 
to be true, that the absurd result is seen to be 
absurd. It is in this way that, in the exact sciences, 



444 



The Unity of Nature. 



erroneous data are being perpetually detected, and 
the sources of error are being perpetually eliminated. 
But Reason seems to have no similar power of 
detecting errors in the data which are supplied to it 
from other departments of thought. In the develop- 
ments, for example, of social habits, and of tKe moral 
sentiments on which these principally depend, no 
results, however extravagant or revolting, are at all 
certain of being rejected because of their absurdity. 
Among men we see it to be a fact that no prac- 
tice however cruel, no custom however destruc- 
tive, is sure on account of its cruelty or of its 
destructiveness to be at once detected and rejected 
as self-evidently wrong. Reason works upon the 
data supplied to it by superstition, or by selfish 
passions and desires, apparently without any power 
of questioning the validity of those data, or, at all 
events, without any power of immediately recognis- 
ing even their most extreme results as evidently 
false. In Religion, at least, it wo-uld almost seem as 
if there were no axiomatic truths which are univer- 
sally, constantly, and instinctively present to the 
Mind — none, at least, which are incapable of being 
obscured — and which, therefore, inevitably compel 
it to revolt against every course or every belief in- 
consistent with them. It is through this agency of 
erroneous Belief that the very highest of our faculties, 
the Sense of Obligation, may and does become itself 
the most powerful of all agents in the development 



Aberrant Developments of Reason in Morals. 445 



of evil. It consecrates what is worst in our own 
nature, or whatever of bad has come to be sown 
in the multitudinous elements which that nature 
contains. The consequence is, that the gift of 
Reason is the very gift by means of which error 
in Belief, and vice in Character, are carried from one 
stage of development to another, until at last they 
may, and they often do, result in conditions of life 
and conduct removed by an immeasurable distance 
from those which are in accordance with the order 
and with the analogies of Nature. 

These are the conditions of life, very much lower, 
as we have seen, than those which prevail among 
the Brutes, which it is now the fashion to assume to 
be the nearest type of the conditions from which 
the Human Race began its course. They are, in 
reality and on the contrary, conditions which could 
not possibly have been reached except after a very 
long journey. They are the goal at which men 
have arrived after running for many generations in a 
wrong direction. They are the result of Evolution 
— they are the product of Development. But it is 
the evolution of germs whose growth is noxious. 
It is the development of passions and desires, some 
of which Man possesses in common with the Brutes, 
others of which are peculiar to himself, but all of 
which are in him freed from the guiding limitations 
which in every other department of Nature prevail 



The Unity of Nature. 



among the motive forces of the world, and by means 
of which alone they work to order. 

It is in the absence of these limitations that what 
is called the Free Will of Man consists. It is not a 
freedom which is absolute and unconditional. It is 
not a freedom which is without limitations of its 
own. It is not a freedom which confers on Man 
the power of acting except on some one or other of 
the motives which it is in his nature to entertain. 
But that nature is so infinitely complex, so many- 
sided, is open to so many influences, and is capable 
of so many movements, that practically their com- 
binations are almost infinite. His freedom is a 
freedom to choose among these motives, and to 
choose what he knows to be the worse instead of 
the better part. This is the freedom without which 
there could be no action attaining to the rank of 
Virtue ; and this also is the freedom in the wrong 
exercise of which all Vice consists. 

There is no theoretical necessity that along with 
this freedom there should be a propensity to use it 
wrongly. It is perfectly conceivable that such free- 
dom should exist, and that all the desires and dis- 
positions of men should be to use it rightly. Not 
only is this conceivable, but it is a wonder that it 
should be otherwise. That a Being with powers of 
Mind and capacities of enjoyment rising high above 
those which belong to any other creature, should, 



Deviation in Man from the Order of Nature. 447 



alone of all these creatures, have an innate tendency 
to use his powers, not only to his own detriment, but 
even to his own self-torture and destruction, is such 
an exception to all rule, such a departure from all 

Order, and such a violation of all the Reasonableness 

1 

of Nature, that we cannot think too much of the 
mystery it involves. It is possible that some light 
may be thrown upon this mystery by following the 
facts connected with it into one of the principal 
fields of their display — namely, the History of 
Religion. But this must form the subject of 
another chapter. 



CHAPTER XL 

On the Nature and Origin of Religion. 

TF any one were to ask what is the origin of hunger 
or what is the origin of thirst, the idleness of 
the question would be felt at once. And yet hun- 
ger and thirst have had an origin. But that origin 
cannot be separated from the origin of Organic Life, 
and the absurdity of the question lies in this — that 
in asking it, the possibility of making such a separa- 
tion is assumed. It involves either the supposition 
that there have been living creatures which had no 
need of food and drink, or else the supposition that 
there have been living creatures which, having that 
need, were nevertheless destitute of any correspond- 
ing appetite. Both of these suppositions, although 
not in the abstract inconceivable, are so contrary to 
all that we know of the laws of Nature, that practi- 
cally they are rejected as impossible. There always 



AIL Appetites Correlated with Facts. 449 



is, and there always must be, a close correspond- 
ence between the intimations of Sensibility and the 
necessities of Life. Hunger is the witness in sensa- 
tion to the law which demands for all living things 
a renewal of Force from the assimilation of external 
matter. To theorise about its origin is to theorise 
about the origin of that law, and consequently 
about the origin of embodied Life. The Darwinian 
formula ■ is not applicable here. Appetite cannot 
have arisen out of the accidents of variation. It 
must have been coeval with Organisation, of which 
it is a necessary part. The same principle applies 
to all elementary appetites and affections, whether 
they be the lower appetites of the Body or the 
higher appetites of the Mind. They exist because of 
the co-existence of certain facts and of certain laws 
to which they stand in a relation which is natural 
and necessary, because it is a relation which is 
reasonable and fitting. Really to understand how 
these appetites and affections arose, it would be 
necessary to understand how all the corresponding 
facts and laws came to be. But in many cases — 
indeed in most cases — any such understanding is 
impossible, because the facts and the laws to which 
every appetite corresponds are in their very nature 
ultimate. They are laws behind which, or beyond 
which, we cannot get. The only true explanation 
of the appetite lies in the simple recognition of the 



45° 



The Unity of Nature. 



Adjusted Relations of which it forms a part; that is 
to say — in a recognition of the whole System of 
Nature as a Reasonable System, and of this par- 
ticular part of it as in harmony with the rest. Any 
attempted explanation of it which does not start 
with that recognition of the Reasonableness of 
Nature must be futile. Any explanation which not 
only fails in this recognition, but assumes that the 
origin of anything can be interpreted without it, 
must be not only futile but erroneous. 

Men have been very busy of late in speculating 
on the origin of Religion. In asking this question 
they generally make, often as it seems unconsciously, 
one or other of two assumptions. One is the 
assumption that there is no God, and that it must 
have taken a long time to invent Him. The other 
is that there is a God, but that men were born, or 
created, or developed, without any sense or feeling 
of His existence, and that the acquisition of such a 
sense must of necessity have been the work of time. 

I do not now say that either of these assumptions 
is in itself inconceivable, any more than the supposi- 
tion that at some former time there were creatures 
needing food and drink and yet having no appetites 
to inform them of the fact. But what I desire to 
point out is, first, that pne or other of these assump- 
tions is necessarily involved in most speculations 
on the subject; and secondly, that, to say the least. 



The Inquiry into the Origin of Religion. 451 



it is possible that neither of these assumptions 
may be true. Yet the method of inquiry to be 
pursued respecting the origin of Religion must be 
entirely different, according as we start from one 
or other of these assumptions, or as we reject them 
both. If we assume that there is no God, then the 
question how Mankind have come so widely to 
invent one or more of such imaginary Beings, is 
indeed a question well worthy of our utmost 
curiosity and research. But on the other hand, if 
we start with the assumption that there is a God, 
or indeed if we assume no more than that there are 
Intelligences in the Universe superior to Man, and 
possessing some power greater than his own over 
the Natural System in which he lives, then the 
method of inquiry into the origin of Religion is 
immensely simplified. Obviously the question how 
Man -first came to recognise the existence of his 
Creator, if we suppose such a Being to exist, 
becomes in virtue of that supposition relegated to 
the same class as the question how he first came to 
recognise any other of the facts or truths which it 
concerns him most to know. Indeed from its very 
nature this truth is evidently one which might be more 
easily and more directly made known to him than 
many others. The existence of a Being from whom 
our own Being has been derived involves, at least, the 
possibility of some communication direct or indirect 



452 



The Unity of Nature, 



Yet the impossibility or the improbability of any 
such communication is another of the assumptions 
continually involved in current theories about the 
origin of Religion. Yet it is quite certain that no 
such assumption can be reasonably made. The per- 
ceptions of the Human Mind are accessible to the 
intimations of external truth through many avenues 
of approach. In its very structure it is made to be 
responsive to some of these intimations by immediate 
apprehension. Man has that within him by which 
the Invisible can be seen, and the Inaudible can be 
heard, and the Intangible can be felt. Not as the 
result of any reasoning, but by the same power by 
which it sees and feels the postulates on which all 
reasoning rests, the Human Mind may from the 
very first have felt that it was in contact with a 
Mind which was the fountain of its own. 

No argument can be conducted without some 
assumptions. But neither ought any argument to 
be conducted without a clear understanding what 
these assumptions are. Having now cleared up the 
assumptions which are usually made, we can proceed 
with greater confidence in the discussion of the 
great problem before us. The origin of particular 
systems of religious Belief is, of course, a mere ques- 
tion of fact. A few of these systems belong to our 
own time ; others have arisen late in the Historic 
Ages and in the full light of contemporary evi- 



Schleiermacher s Definition of Religion. 453 



dence. Some, again, are first recognised in the 
dawn of those Ages, and their distinctive features 
can only be dimly traced through evidence which is 
scanty and obscure. Religion is the origin of all 
these systems of Belief, but no one of them repre- 
sents the origin of Religion. None of them throw 
any other light on the origin of Religion than as all 
exhibiting- the one essential element in which all 
Religion consists. And it would be well if men, 
before philosophising on the origin of Religion, had 
a more accurate conception of what they mean by it. 
The definitions of Religion have been even worse 
than the definitions of Morality. Just as the attempt 
is made to account for Morals apart from the sense 
of duty or of Obligation in conduct, so is the attempt 
made to account for Religion apart from the sense 
of Mind or Will in Nature. The great effort seems 
to have been to try how the essential idea of Religion 
could be either most completely eliminated or else 
most effectually concealed. For example, a feel- 
ing of absolute Dependence has been specified by 
Schleiermacher as the essence of Religion. Yet 
it is evident that a sense of absolute Dependence 
may be urgent and oppressive without the slightest 
tincture of religious feeling. A man carried off 
in a flood, and clinging to a log of wood, may 
have, and must have, a painful sense of absolute 
dependence on the log. But no one would think 



454 



The Unity of Nature. 



of describing this sense as a feeling of Religion. 
A Savage may have a feeling of absolute depend- 
ence on his bows and arrows, or on the other 
implements of his chase ; or disease may bring 
home to him a sense of his absolute dependence on 
the Organs of his own body, which alone enable him 
to use his weapons with success. But it does not 
follow that the Savage has any feeling of Religion 
towards his bow, or his arrow, or his net, or his fish- 
spear, or even towards his own legs and arms. Any 
plausibility, therefore, which may attach to the 
proposition which identifies Religion with the mere 
sense of Dependence, is due entirely to the fact that 
when men speak of a sense of Dependence they 
suggest the idea of a particular kind of dependence 
— namely, Dependence upon a Being or a Perso- 
nality, and not Dependence upon a thing. That is to 
say, that the plausibility of the definition is entirely 
due to an element of thought which it is specially 
framed to keep out of sight. A sense of absolute 
Dependence on purely physical things does not 
necessarily contain any religious element whatever. 
But on the other hand, a sense of ^Dependence on 
Personal or Living Agencies, whether they are sup- 
posed to be supreme or only superior to our own, 
is a feeling which is essentially religious. 45 " But the 

* Professor Tide's definition of Religion corresponds with that here 
given : — " The relation between Man and the Superhuman Powers in 



Religion Belief in a Personal Deity, 455 



element in that feeling which makes it religious is 
the element of belief in a Being or in Beings who 
have Power and Will. When we say of any man, or 
of any tribe of men, that they have no Religion, we 
mean that they have no belief in the existence of 
any such Being or Beings, or at least no such belief 
as to require any acknowledgment or any worship. 

The practice of worship of some kind or another 
is so generally associated with Religion, that we do 
not usually think of it otherwise than as a necessary 
accompaniment. It is a natural accompaniment, 
for the simple reason that in the very act of think- 
ing of Superhuman Beings the Mind has an inevi- 
table tendency to think of them as possessing not 
only an intellectual but a moral nature which has 
analogies with our own. It conceives of them as 
having dispositions and feelings as well as mere 
Intellect and Will. Complete indifference towards 
other creatures is not natural or usual in ourselves, 
nor can it be natural to attribute it to other Beinos. 
In proportion therefore as we ascribe to the Super- 
human Personalities, in whose existence we believe, 
the Authorship or the rule over, or even a mere 
partnership in, the activities round us, in the same 
proportion is it natural to regard those Beings 
as capable of exercising some influence upon us, 

which he believes." (Outlines of the History of the Ancient Religions,, 
p. 2.) 



456 



The Unity of Natitre. 



whether for evil or for good. This conception of 
them must lead to worship — that is to say, to the 
cherishing of some feeling and sentiment in regard to 
them, and to some methods of giving it expression. 
There is, therefore, no mystery whatever in the 
usual and all but universal association of worship of 
some kind with all conceptions of a religious nature. 

It is to be remembered, however, that as a matter 
of fact, the belief in the existence of a God, or of 
more Gods than one, has come; though rarely, to 
be separated from the worship of them. Among 
speculative philosophers this separation may arise 
from theories about the Divine nature, which repre- 
sent it as inaccessible to supplication, or as indif- 
ferent to the sentiments of men. Among Savages 
it may arise from the evolution of decay. It may 
be nothing but "a sleep and a forgetting" — the 
result of the breaking up of ancient homes, and 
the consequent impossibility of continuing the prac- 
tice of rites which had become inseparably associ- 
ated with local usages. Among philosophers this 
divorce between the one essential element of 
Religion and the natural accompaniments of wor- 
ship, is well exhibited in the Lucretian conception 
of the Olympian Gods, as well as in the condition 
of mind of many men in our own day, who have 
not rejected the idea of a God, but who do not 
feel the need of addressing Him in the language 



Divorce^/ 'Religion and Worship Anomalous. 457 

either of prayer or praise. Of this same divorce 
among Savages we have an example in certain 
Australian tribes, who are said to have a theology 
so definite as to believe in the existence of one 
God, the omnipotent Creator of Heaven and of 
Earth, and yet to be absolutely destitute of any 
worship.* Both of these, however, are aberrant 
phenomena — conditions of mind which are anoma- 
lous, and in all probability essentially transitional. 
It has been shown in the preceding pages how 
impossible it is to regard Australian or any other 
Savages of the present time as representing the 
probable condition of Primeval Man. It needs no 
argument to prove that it is equally impossible to 
regard speculative philosophers of any school as 
representing the mind of the earliest progenitors of 
our race. But neither of Savages nor of Philoso- 
phers who believe in a God but do not pray to 
Him, would it be proper to say that they have no 
Religion. They may be on the way to having 
none, or they may be on the way to having more. 
But men who believe in the existence of any Per- 
sonal or Living Agency in Nature superior to our 
own, are in possession of the one essential element 
of all Religion. This belief is almost universally 
associated with practices which are in the nature of 

* Hibbert Lectures, by Max Miiller, 1878, pp. 16, 17. 



I 



453 



The Unity of Nature. 



worship — with sentiments of awe, or of reverence, 
or of fear. 

It is not inconsistent with this definition to admit 
that sects or individuals, who have come to reject 
all definite theological conceptions and to deny the 
existence of a living God, have, nevertheless, been 
able to retain feelings and sentiments which may 
justly claim to be called religious. In the first 
place, with many men of this kind, their denial of 
a God is not in reality a complete denial. What* 
they deny is very often only some particular con- 
ception of the Godhead, which is involved, or 
which they think is involved, in the popular theo- 
logy. They are repelled, perhaps, by the fami- 
liarity with which the least elevated of human 
passions are sometimes attributed to the Divine 
Being. Or they may be puzzled by the anomalies 
of Nature, and find it impossible to reconcile them 
intellectually with any definite conception of a 
Being who is both all-powerful and all-good. But 
in faltering under this difficulty, or under other 
difficulties of the same kind, and in denying the 
possibility of forming any clear or definite concep- 
tions of the Godhead, they do not necessarily 
renounce other conceptions which, though vague 
and indefinite, are nevertheless sufficient to form 
the nucleus of a hazy atmosphere of religious feel- 
ing and . emotion. Such men may or may not 



Belief in Order Belief in a Personal God. 459 



recognise the fact that these feelings and emotions 
have been inherited from ancestors whose beliefs 
were purely theological, and that it is in the highest 
degree doubtful how long these feelings can be 
retained as mere survivals. 

It is remarkable that such feelings are even now 
artificially propped up and supported by a system 
of investing abstract terms with all the elements of 
Personality. When men who profess to have re- 
jected the idea of a God declare, nevertheless, as 
Strauss has declared, that " the world is to them the 
workshop of the Rational and the Good," — when 
they explain that "that on which they feel them- 
selves to be absolutely dependent is by no means a 
brute power, but that it is Order and Law, Reason 
and Goodness, to which they surrender themselves 
with loving confidence," we cannot be mistaken that 
the whole of this language, and the whole concep- 
tions which underlie it, are language and conceptions 
appropriate to Agencies and Powers which are 
possessed of all the characteristics of Mind and 
Will. Order and Law are, indeed, in some minds 
associated with nothing except Matter and material 
Forces. But neither Reason nor Goodness can be 
thus dissociated from the idea of Personality. All 
other definitions which have been given of Reli- 
gion will be found on analvsis to borrow whatever 
strength they have from involving, either expressly 



460 



The Unity of Nature. 



or implicitly, this one conception. Morality, for 
example, becomes Religion in proportion as all 
duty and all Obligation is regarded as resting on 
the sanctions of a Divine Authority. In like man- 
ner, Knowledge may be identified with Religion 
in proportion as all knowledge is summed up and 
comprehended in the perfect knowledge of One 
who is All in All. Nor is there any real escape 
from this one primary and fundamental element of 
Religion in the attempt made by Comte to set up 
Man himself — Humanity — as the object of religious 
worship. It is the Human Mind and Will abstracted 
and personified that is the object of this worship. 
Accordingly, in the system of Comte, it is the 
language of Christian and even of Catholic adoration 
that is borrowed as the best and fullest expression 
of its aspirations and desires. Such an impersona- 
tion of the Human Mind and Will, considered as 
an aggregate of the past and of the future, and 
separated from the individual who is required to 
worship it, does contain the element, or at least some 
faint outline and shadow of the one element, which 
has been here represented as essential to Religion 
■ — the element, namely, of some Power in Nature 
other than mere brute Matter or mere physical 
Force — which Power is thought of and conceived 
as invested with the higher attributes of the Human 
Personality. 



Supernatural Belief a Personal Belief, 46 1 



Like methods of analysis are sufficient to detect 
the same element in other definitions of Religion, 
which are much more common. When, for example, 
it is said that "the Supernatural" or "the Infinite" 
are the objects of religious thought, the same fun- 
damental conception is involved, and is more or 
less consciously intended. The first of these two 
abstract expressions, "the Supernatural," is avow- 
edly an expression for the existence and the agency 
of superhuman Personalities. It is objectionable 
only in so far as it seems to imply that such agency 
is no part of " Nature." This is in one sense a 
mere question of definition. We may choose to 
look upon our own human agency as an agency 
which is outside of Nature. If we do so, then, of 
course, it is natural to think of the agency of other 
Beings as outside of Nature also. But; on the other 
hand, if we choose to understand by " Nature " the 
whole System of things, visible and invisible, in which 
we live and of which we form a part, then the belief 
in the agency of other Beings of greater power, does 
not necessarily involve any belief whatever that they 
are outside of that System. On the contrary, the 
belief in such an agency may be identified with all 
our conceptions of what that System as a whole is, 
and especially of its Order and its Intelligibility. 
Whilst therefore, " the Supernatural," as commonly- 
understood, gives a true indication of the only real 



462 



The Unity of Nature. 



objects of religious thought, it complicates that in- 
dication by coupling the idea of Living Agencies 
above our own with a description of them which at 
the best is irrelevant, and is very apt to be mis- 
leading. The question of the existence of Living 
Beings superior to Man, and having more or less 
power over him and over his destinies, is quite a 
separate question from the relation in which those 
Beings may stand to what is commonly but variously 
understood by " Nature." 

The other phrase, now often used to express the 
objects of religious thought and feeling, "the In- 
finite," is a phrase open to objection of a very different 
kind. It is ambiguous, not merely as "the Super- 
natural " is ambiguous, by reason of its involving 
a separate and adventitious meaning besides the 
meaning which is prominent and essential ; but it is 
ambiguous by reason of not necessarily containing 
at all the one meaning which is essential to Religion. 
" The Infinite" is a pure and bare abstraction, which 
may or may not include the one only object of reli- 
gious consciousness and thought. An Infinite Being, 
if that be the meaning of "the Infinite," is, indeed, 
the highest and most perfect object of Religion. 
But an infinite space is no object of religious 
feeling. An infinite number of material units is 
no object of religious thought. Infinite time is no 
object of religious thought. On the other hand, 



Belief in the Infinite an Ambiguous Phrase. 463 



infinite Power not only may be, but must be, an 
object of religious contemplation in proportion as it 
is connected with the idea of Power in a living Will. 
Infinite Goodness must be the object of religious 
thought and emotion, because in its very nature this 
conception involves that of a Personal Being. But 
if all this is what is intended by "the Infinite," then 
it would be best to say so plainly. The only use 
of the phrase, as the one selected to indicate the 
object of Religion, is that it may be understood in a 
sense that is kept out of sight. And the explana- 
tions which have been given of it are generally 
open to the same charge of studied ambiguity. 
"The Infinite" has been defined as that which 
transcends Sense and Reason, — that which cannot 
be comprehended or completely and wholly under- 
stood, although it may be apprehended or partially 
conceived.* And no doubt, if this definition be 
applied, as by implication it always is applied, to 
the Power and to the resources, or to any other 
feature in the character of an Infinite Being, then 
it becomes a fair definition of the highest conceiv- 
able object of religious thought. But, again, if it be 
not so applied, — if it be understood as only apply- 
ing to the impossibility under which we find our- 
selves of grasping anything which is limitless,— of 
counting an infinite number of units, — of traversing, 

*Max Miiller, Hibbert Lectures, 1878. 



464 



The Unity of Nature. 



even in thought, an infinite space, — of living out 
an infinite time, — then il the Infinite" does not con- 
tain, even in the least degree, the one essential 
element which constitutes Religion. 

Similar objections apply to another abstract 
phrase, sometimes used as a definition of the object 
of religious feeling, namely, "the Invisible." Mere 
material things, which are either too large to be 
wholly seen, or too small to be seen at all, can never 
supply the one indispensable element of Religion. 
In so far, therefore, as Invisibility applies to them 
only, it suggests nothing of a religious nature. But 
in so far as " the Invisible" means, and is intended 
to apply to, living Beings who are out of sight, to 
Personal Agencies which either have no bodily form, 
or who are thought of and conceived as separate from 
such form — in so far, of course, the "Invisible," like 
the Infinite, does cover and include the conception 
without which there can be no Religion. 

Definitions of meaning are more or less impor- 
tant in all discussions ; but there are many questions 
in which they are by no means essential, because of 
the facility with which we refer the abstract words 
we may be using to the concrete things, — to the 
actual phenomena to which they are applied. When, 
for example, we speak of the religion of Mahomet, 
or of the religion of Confucius, or of the religion 01 
Buddha, we do not need to define what we mean by 



A Clear Definition of Religion Necessary. 465 



the word " Religion," because in all of these cases 
the system of doctrine and the conceptions which 
constitute those religions are known, or are matters 
of historical evidence. But when we come to dis- 
cuss' the origin, not of any particular system of Be- 
lief, but of Religion in the abstract, some clear and 
intelligible definition of the word Religion becomes 
absolutely essential, because in that discussion we 
are dealing with a question which is purely specu- 
lative. It is idle to enter upon that speculative 
discussion unless we have some definite understand- 
ing what we are speculating about. In the case 
of Religion we cannot keep our understanding of 
the word fresh and distinct by thinking of any well- 
known and admitted facts respecting the beginnings 
of Belief. There are no such facts to go upon as 
regards the religion of Primeval Man. Those, in- 
deed, who accept the narrative attributed to the 
inspired authority of the Jewish Lawgiver have no 
need to speculate. In that narrative the origin of 
Religion is identified with the origin of Man, and 
the Creator is represented as having had, in some 
form or another, direct communication with the 
Creature He had made. But those who do not 
accept that narrative, or who, without rejecting it 
altogether, regard it as so full of metaphor that it 
gives us no satisfying explanation, and who assume 
that Religion has had an origin subsequent to the 



466 



The Unity of Nature. 



origin of the Species, have absolutely nothing to 
rely upon in the nature of History. There is no 
contemporary evidence, nor is there any tradition 
which can be trusted. Primeval Man has kept no 
journal of his own first religious emotions, any more 
than of his own first appearance in the world. We 
are therefore thrown back upon pure speculation- 
speculation, indeed, which may find in the present, 
and in a comparatively recent past, some data for 
arriving at conclusions, more or less probable, on 
the conditions of a time which is out of sight. But 
among the very first of these data, if it be not 
indeed the one datum without which all others are 
useless, is a clear conception of the element which 
is common to all Religions as they exist now, or as 
they can be traced back beyond the dawn of History 
into the dim twilight of Tradition. Of this universal 
element in all religions "the Infinite" is no defini- 
tion at all. It is itself much more vague and inde- 
finite in meaning than the word which it professes 
to explain. And this is all the more needless, see- 
ing that the common element in all Religions, such 
as we know them now, is one of the greatest sim- 
plicity. It is the element of a Belief in superhuman 
Beings — in living Agencies, other and higher than 
our own. 

It is astonishing how much the path of investi- 
gation is cleared before us the moment we have 



The Belief Fundamental to all Religions. 467 



arrived at this definition of the Belief which is 
fundamental to all Religions. That Belief is simply 
a Belief in the existence of Beings of whom our 
own Being is the type, although it need not be the 
Measure or the Form. By the very terms of the 
definition the origin of this Belief is and must be 
in ourselves — in our own conscious relationship to 
external facts. That is to say, the disposition to 
believe in the existence of such Beings arises out 
of the felt Unity of our own nature with the whole 
System of things in which we live and of which 
we are a part. It is the simplest and most natural 
of all conceptions, that the Agency of which we 
are most conscious in ourselves is like the Agency 
which works in the world around us. Even sup- 
posing this conception to be groundless, and that, 
as some now maintain, a more scientific investiga- 
tion of natural agencies abolishes the conception 
of Design or Purpose, or of personal Will being at 
all concerned therein,— even supposing this, it is not 
the less true that the transfer of conceptions founded 
on our own consciousness of Agency and of Power 
within us to the Agencies and Powers around us, is 
a natural, if it be not indeed a necessary, concep- 
tion. That it is a natural conception is proved by 
the fact that it has been, and still is, so widely 
prevalent ; as well as by the fact that what is called 
the purely scientific conception of Natural Agencies 
is a modern conception, and one which is confessedly 



468 



The Unity of Nature, 



of difficult attainment. So difficult indeed is it to 
expel from the mind the conception of Personality 
in or behind the Agencies of Nature, that it may 
fairly be questioned whether it has ever been effectu- 
ally done. Verbal devices for keeping the idea out 
of sight are indeed very common ; but even these 
are not very successful. I have elsewhere pointed 
out^ that those naturalists and philosophers who are 
most opposed to all theological explanations or con- 
ceptions of natural Forces do, nevertheless, habitually, 
in spite of themselves, have recourse to language 
which derives its whole form, as well as its whole 
intelligibility, from those elements of meaning 
which refer to the familiar operations of our own 
Mind and Will. The very phrase " Natural Selec- 
tion " is one which likens the operations of Nature 
to the operations of a Mind exercising the power of 
Choice, The whole meaning of the phrase is to 
indicate how Nature attains certain ends which are 
like "Selection." And what "Selection" is we 
know, because it is an operation familiar to our- 
selves. But the personal element of Will and of 
Purpose lies even deeper than this in the scientific 
theory of Evolution. When we ourselves select, 
we may very often choose only among things ready 
made to our hands. But in the theory of Evolu- 
tion, Nature is not merely represented as choosing 

* " Reign of Law," chaps, i. and v. 



Personality in the Energies of 'Nature. 469 



among things ready made, but as at first making the 
things which are to be afterwards fitted for selection. 
Organs are represented as growing in certain forms 
•and shapes " in order that " they may serve certain 
uses, and then as being ''selected" by that use in 
order that they may be established and prevail. 
The same idea runs throughout all the detailed 
descriptions of growth and of development by which 
these processes are directed to useful and service- 
able results. So long as in the mere description of 
phenomena men find themselves compelled to have 
recourse to language of this sort, they have not 
emancipated themselves from the natural tendency 
of all human thought to see the elements of our own 
Personality in the energies and in the works of 
Nature. 

But whether the attempt at such emancipation be 
successful or not, the very effort which it requires is 
a proof of the natural servitude under which we lie. 
And if it be indeed a natural servitude, the difficulty 
of getting rid of it is explained. It is hard to kick 
against the pricks. There is no successful rebellion 
against the Servitudes of Nature. The suggestions 
which come to us from the external world, and which 
are of such necessity that we cannot choose but hear 
them, have their origin in the whole constitution and 
course of things. To seek for any origin of them 
apart from the origin of our whole intellectual nature, 



470 



The Unity of Nature. 



and apart from the relations between that nature 
and the facts of the Universe around us, is to seek 
for something which does not exist. We may 
choose to assume that there are no Intelligences 
in Nature superior to our own ; but the fact remains 
that it is a part of our mental constitution to imagine 
otherwise. If, on the other hand, we assume that 
such Intelligences do exist, then the recognition of 
that existence, or the impression of it, is involved 
in no other difficulty than is involved in the origin 
of any other part of the furniture of our minds. 
What is the origin of Reason ? The perception 
of Logical Necessity is the perception of a real 
relation between things ; and this relation between 
things is represented by a corresponding relation 
between our conceptions of them. We can give 
no account of the origin of that perception unless 
we can give an account of the origin of Man, 
and of the whole system to which he stands related. 
What, again, is the origin of Imagination ? It 
is the mental power by which we handle the 
elementary conceptions derived from our mental 
constitution in contact and in harmony with external 
things, and by which we recombine these concep- 
tions in an endless variety of forms. We can give 
no account of the origin of such a power or of such 
a habit. What is the origin of Wonder ? In the 
lower animals a lower form of it exists in the shape 



Knowableness of N attire necessitates Belief. 471 



of Curiosity, being little more than an impulse to 
seek for that which may be food, or to avoid that 
which may be danger. But in Man it is one of the 
most powerful and the most fruitful of all his mental 
characteristics. Of its origin we can give no other 
account than that there exists in Man an indefinite 
power of knowing, in contact with an equally 
indefinite number of things which are to him 
unknown. Between these two facts the connecting 
link is the wish to know. And, indeed, if the 
System of Nature were not a Reasonable System, 
the power of knowing might exist in Man without 
any wish to use it. But the System of Nature, 
being what it is — a System which is the very 
embodiment of Wisdom and Knowledge — such a 
departure from its Unity is impossible. That Unity 
consists in the universal and rational correspond- 
ence of all its essential facts. There would be no 
such correspondence between the powers of the 
human Mind and the ideas which they are fitted 
to entertain, if these powers were not incited by 
an appetite of inquiry. Accordingly, the desire 
of knowledge is as much born with Man as the 
desire of food. The impression that there are 
things around him which he does not know or 
understand, but which he can know and understand 
by effort and inquiry, is so much part of Man's 
Nature that Man would not be Man without it. 



t 



472 The Unity of Nature. 

Religion is but a part of this impression — or rather 
it is the sum and consummation of all the intima- 
tions from which this impression is derived. Among 
the things of which he has an impression as existing, 
and respecting which he desires to know more, are, 
above all other things, Personalities or Agencies, 
or Beings having powers like, but superior to, his 
own. This is Religion. In this impression is to 
be found the origin of all Theologies. But of its 
own origin we can give no account until we know 
the origin of Man. 

I have dwelt upon this point of definition because 
those who discuss the origin of Religion seem very 
often to be wholly unconscious of various assump- 
tions which are necessarily involved in the very 
question they propound. One of these assumptions 
clearly is that there was a time when Man existed 
without any feeling or impression that any Being or 
Beings superior to himself existed in Nature or 
behind it. The assumption is that the idea of 
the existence of such Beings is a matter of hi^h 
and difficult attainment, to be reached only after 
some long process of evolution and development. 
Whereas the truth may very well be, and probably 
is, that there never was a time since Man became 
possessed of the mental constitution which separates 
him from the Brutes, when he was destitute of some 
conception of the existence of living Agencies other 



Self-Consciousness Sttggests Invisible Power. 473 

than his own. Instead of being a difficult concep- 
tion, it may very well turn out to be, on investiga- 
tion, the very simplest of all conceptions. The real 
difficulty may lie not in entertaining it, but in getting 
rid of it, or in restraining its undue immanence and 
power. The reason of this difficulty is obvious. 
Of all the Intuitive Faculties which are peculiar to 
Man, that of Self-consciousness is the most promi- 
nent. In virtue of that faculty or power, without 
-any deliberate reasoning or logical process of any 
formal kind, Man must have been always familiar 
with the idea of energies which are themselves in- 
visible, and only to be seen in their effects. His own 
loves and hates, his own gratitude and revenge, his 
own schemes and resolves, must have been familiar 
to him from the first as things in themselves invisible, 
and yet having power to determine the most opposite 
and the most decisive changes for good or evil in 
things which are visible and material. It never could 
have been difficult for him, therefore, to separate the 
idea of Personality, or of the efficiency of Mind and 
Will, from the attribute of visibility. It never could 
have been any difficulty with him to think of living 
Agencies other than his own, and yet without any 
P'orm, or wirfi Forms concealed from sight. There 
is no need therefore to hunt farther afield for the 
origin of this conception than Man's own conscious- 
ness of himself. There is no need of eoine to the 



474 



The Unity of Nature. 



winds which are invisible, or to the heavenly bodies 
which are intangible, or to the sky which is immea- 
surable. None of these, in virtue either of mere 
invisibility, or of mere intangibility, or of mere 
immeasurableness, could have suggested the idea 
which is fundamental in Religion. That idea was 
indeed supplied to Man from Nature ; but it was 
from his own nature in communion with the 
nature of all things around him. To conceive of the 
energies that are outside of him as like the energies 
that he feels within him, is simply to think of the 
unknown in terms of the familiar and the known. 
To think thus can never have been to him any 
matter of difficult attainment. It must have been, 
in the very nature of things, the earliest, the simplest, 
and the most necessary of all conceptions. 

The conclusion, then, to which we come from 
this analysis of Religion is that there is no reason 
to believe, but on the contrary many reasons to 
disbelieve, that there ever was a time when Man, 
with his existing constitution, lived in contact with 
the Forces and in face of the Energies of Nature, 
and yet with no impression or belief that in those 
energies, or behind them, there were Living 
Agencies other than his own. And if Man, ever 
since he became Man, had always some such 
impression or. Belief, then he always had a Religion,, 



Conceptions of Form and Place. 475 



and the question of its origin cannot be separated 
from the origin of the Species. 

It is a part of the Unity of Nature that the clear 
perception of any one truth leads almost always tc 
the perception of some other, which follows from or 
is connected with the first. And so it is in this 
case. The same analysis which establishes a neces- 
sary connection between the self-consciousness of 
Man and the one fundamental element of all 
religious emotion and Belief, establishes an equally 
natural connection between another part of the 
same self-consciousness and certain tendencies in 
the development of Religion which we know to 
have been widely prevalent. For although in the 
operations of our own Mind and Spirit, with their 
strong and often violent emotions, we are familiar 
with a powerful Agency which is in itself invisible,, 
yet it is equally true that we are familiar with that 
Agency as always working in and through a Body. 
It is natural, therefore, when we think of Living 
Agencies in Nature other than our own, to think of 
them as having some Form, or at least as having some 
Abode. Seeing, however, and knowing the work of 
those Agencies to be work exhibiting power and 
resources so much greater than our own, there is 
obviously unlimited scope for the imagination in 
conceiving what that Form and where that Abode 
may be. Given, therefore, these two inevitable 



4/6 



The Unity of Nature. 



tendencies of the human Mind — the tendency to 
believe in the existence of Personalities other than 
our own, and the tendency to think of them as 
living in some Shape and in some Place — we have 
a natural and sufficient explanation, not only of the 
existence of Religion, but of the thousand forms in 
which it has found expression in the world. For 
as Man since he became Man, in respect to the 
existing powers and apparatus of his Mind, has 
r never been without the consciousness of Self, nor 
without some desire of interpreting the things 
around him in terms of his own thoughts, so neither 
has he been without the power of imagination. By 
virtue of it he recombines into countless new forms 
not onlv the Images of Sense but his own instinctive 
interpretations of them. Obviously we have in this 
faculty the prolific source of an infinite variety of 
conceptions, which may be pure and simple or foul 
and unnatural, according to the elements supplied 
out of the moral and intellectual character of the 
minds which are ima^inino". Obviously, too. we 
have in this process an unlimited field for the 
development of good or of evil germs. The work 
which in the last chapter I have shown to be the 
inevitable work of Reason when it starts from any 
datum which is false, must be, in religious concep- 
tions above all others, a work of rapid and continu- 
ous evolution. The steps of Natural Consequence, 



No Race of Men Destitute of Belief in a God. 4-77 



when they are downward here, must be downwards 
along the steepest gradients. It must be so because 
the conceptions which men have formed respecting 
the Supreme Agencies in Nature are of necessity 
conceptions which give energy to all the springs of 
Action. They touch the deepest roots of Motive. 
In Thought they open the most copious fountains of 
Suggestion. In Conduct they affect the supreme 
influence of Authority, and the next most powerful 
of all influences, the influence of Example. What- 
ever may have been false or wrong, therefore, from 
the first in any religious conception must inevitably 
tend to become worse and worse with time, and with 
the temptation under which men have lain to follow 
up the steps of evil consequence to their most- 
extreme conclusions. 

Armed with the certainties which thus arise out 
of the very nature of the conceptions we are dealing 
with when we inquire into the origin of Religion, 
we can now approach that question by consulting 
the only other sources of authentic information, 
which are, first, the facts which Religion presents 
among the existing generations of men ; and, 
secondly, such facts as can be safely gathered from 
the records of the past. 

On one main point which has been questioned 
respecting existing facts, the progress of inquiry 
seems to have established beyond any reasonable 



478 



The Unity of Nature. 



doubt that no race of men now exists so savaee 
and degraded as to be, or to have been when 
discovered, wholly destitute of any conceptions of 
a religious nature. It is now well understood that 
all the cases in which the existence of such Savages 
has been reported, are cases which break down 
upon more intimate knowledge and more scientific 
inquiry. 

Such is the conclusion arrived at by a careful 
modern inquirer, Professor Tiele, who says : " The 
statement that there are nations or tribes which 
possess no religion, rests either on inaccurate 
observations or on a confusion of ideas. No tribe 
or nation has yet been met with destitute of belief 
in any higher Beings, and travellers who asserted 
their existence have been afterwards refuted by 
facts. It is legitimate, therefore, to call Religion, 
in its most general sense, an universal phenomenon 
of humanity."* 

Although this conclusion on a matter of fact is 
satisfactory, it must be remembered that, even if it 
had been true that some Savages do exist with no 
conception whatever of Living Beings higher than 
themselves, it would be no proof whatever that such 
was the primeval condition of Man. The arguments 
adduced in a former chapter, that the most degraded 
savagery of the present day is or may be the result 

^"History of Religion,"p. 6. 



Tendency to Deify Material Objects. 



479 



of Evolution working upon highly unfavourable con- 
ditions, are arguments which deprive such facts, 
even if they existed, of all value in support of the 
assumption that the lowest savagery was the con- 
dition of the first progenitors of our race. Degrada- 
tion being a process which has certainly operated, 
and is now operating, upon some races, and to 
some extent, it must always remain a question how 
far this process may go in paralysing the activity 
of our higher powers, or in setting them, as it were, 
to sleep. It is well, however, that we have no 
such problem to discuss. Whether any Savages 
exist with absolutely no religious conceptions is, 
after all, a question of subordinate importance ; 
because it is certain that, if they exist at all, they 
are a very extreme case and a very rare exception. 
It is notorious that, in the case of most Savages 
and of all Barbarians, not only have they some 
Religion, but their Religion is one of the very worst 
elements in their savagery or their barbarism. 

Looking now to the facts presented by the exist- 
ing Religions of the world, there is one of these 
facts which at once arrests attention, and that is 
, the tendency of all Religions, whether savage or 
civilised, to connect the Personal Agencies who are 
feared or worshipped with some material object. 
The nature of that connection may not be always 
— it may not be even in any case— perfectly clear 



480 



The Unity of Nature, 



and definite. The rigorous analysis of our own 
thoughts upon such subjects is difficult, even to the 
most enlightened men. To rude and savage men 
it is impossible. There is no mystery, therefore, 
in the fact that the connection which exists between 
various material objects and the Beings who are 
worshipped in them or through them, is a connec- 
tion which remains generally vague in the mind of 
the worshipper himself. Sometimes the material 
object is an Embodiment ; sometimes it is a Symbol ; 
often it may be only an Abode. Nor is it wonderful 
that there should be a like variety in the particular 
objects which have come to be so regarded. Some- 
times they are such material objects as the heavenly 
bodies. Sometimes they are natural productions 
of our own Planet, such as particular trees, or 
particular animals, or particular things in themselves 
inanimate, such as springs, or streams, or mountains. 
Sometimes they are manufactured articles, stones 
or blocks of wood cut into some shape which has a 
meaning either obvious or traditional. 

The universality of this tendency to connect some 
material objects with religious worship, and the 
immense variety of modes in which this tendency 
has been manifested, is a fact which receives a full 
and adequate explanation in our natural disposition 
to conceive of ail Personal Agencies as living in 



Degenerate Development of Forms. 48 1 

some Form and in some Place or as having some 
other special connection with particular things in 
Nature. Nor is it difficult to understand how the 
Embodiments, or the Symbols, or the Abodes, which 
may be imagined and devised by men, will vary 
according as their mental condition has been devel- 
oped in a good or in a wrong direction. And as these 
imaginings and devices are never, as we see them 
now among Savages, the work of any one generation 
of men, but are the accumulated inheritance of many 
generations, all existing systems of worship among 
them must be regarded as presumably very wide 
departures from the conceptions which were primeval. 
And this presumption gains additional force when 
we observe the distinction which exists between the 
fundamental conceptions of Religious Belief and the 
forms of worship which have come to be the expres- 
sion and embodiment of these. In the Religion of 
the highest and best races, in Christianity itself, we 
know the wide difference which obtains between the 
Theology of the Church and the popular superstitions 
which have been developed under it These super- 
stitions may be, and often are, of the grossest kind. 
They may be indeed, and in many cases are known 
to be, vestiges of Pagan worship which have sur- 
vived all religious revolutions and reforms ; but in 
other cases they are the natural and legitimate 

2 H 



482 



The Unity of Nature, 



■development of some erroneous Belief accepted as 
part of the Christian Creed. Here, as elsewhere, 
Reason working on false data has been, as under 
such conditions it must always be, the great agent 
in degradation and decay. 



CHAPTER XIL 



On Trj2 Causes of Religious Corruption. 
""HE considerations set forth in the previous 



chapter indicate the fallacies which lie in 
our way when we endeavour to collect from the 
worship of savage nations any secure conclusions 
as to the origin of Religion. Upon these fallacies, 
and upon no more safe foundation, Comte built up 
his famous generalisation of the four necessary 
stages in the history of Religion. First came 
Fetishism, then Polytheism, and then Monotheism, 
and last and latest, the heir of all the ages, came 
Comtism itself, or the Religion of Humanity, which 
is to be the worship of the future. 

Professor Max M tiller has done memorable ser- 
vice in the analysis and in the exposure which 
he has given us of the origin and use of the 
word " Fetishism," and of the theory which 
represents it as a necessary stage in the develop- 
ment of Religion* It turns out that the word 
itself, and the fundamental idea it embodies, is a 

* "Hibbert Lectures," 1878. 




484 



The Unity of Natitre. 



word and an idea derived from one of those- 
popular superstitions which are so common in 
connection with Latin Christianity. The Portu- 
guese sailors who first explored the West Coast 01 
Africa were themselves accustomed to attach super- 
stitious value to beads, or crosses, or images, or 
charms, and amulets of their own. These were 
called " feiticos." They saw the negroes attaching 
some similar value to various objects of a similar 
kind, and these Portuguese sailors therefore described 
the negro worship as the worship of " feiticos." Pre- 
sident de Brosses, a French philosopher of the 
Voltairean epoch in literature, then extended the 
term Fetish so as to include not only artificial 
articles, but also such great natural features as trees, 
mountains, rivers, and animals. In this way he 
was enabled to classify together, under' one indis- 
criminate appellation, many different kinds of wor- 
ship and many different stages in the history of 
religious development or decay. This is an excel- 
lent example of the crude theories and false generali- 
sations which have been prevalent on the subject of 
the origin of Religion. First, there is the assump- 
tion that whatever is lowest in savagery must have 
been primeval — an assumption which,- as we have 
seen, is in all cases improbable, and in many cases 
must necessarily be false. Next there is great care- 
lessness in ascertaining what is really true even of 



The Theology often Superior to the Worship. 485 



existing Savages in respect to their religious Be- 
liefs. It has now been clearly ascertained that those 
very African negroes whose superstitious worship of 
material articles, supposed to have some mysterious 
powers or virtues, is most degraded, do nevertheless 
retain, behind and above this worship, certain Beliefs 
as to the nature of the Godhead, which are almost 
as far above their own abject superstitions as the 
theology of a Fdnelon is above the superstitions of an 
ignorant Roman Catholic peasant. It is found that 
some African tribes have retained their belief in one 
Supreme Being, the Creator of the world, and the 
circumstance that nevertheless no worship may be 
addressed to Him has received from Professor Max 
Miiller an explanation which is ample. "It may 
•arise from an excess of reverence quite as much as 
from negligence. Thus the Odjis or Cohantis call 
the Supreme Being by the same name as the sky ; 
but they mean by it a Personal God, who, as they 
say, created all things and is the Giver of all good 
things. But though He is omnipresent and omni- 
scient, knowing even the thoughts of men, and pity- 
ing them in their distress, the government of the 
world is, as they believe, deputed by Him to inferior 
Spirits, and .among these, again, it is the malevolent 
Spirits only who require worship and sacrifice from 
Man." # And this is by no means a solitary case. 

* " Hibbert Lectures," pp. 107, 108. 



4 86 



The Unity of Nature. 



There are many others in which the investigations 
of missionaries respecting the religious conceptions 
of savage nations have revealed the fact that they 
have a much higher theology than is indicated in 
their worship. 

The truth is, that nowhere is the evidence of 
development in a wrong direction so strong as in 
the many customs of savage and barbarous nations 
which are more or less directly connected with 
Religion. The idea has long been abandoned that 
the Savage lives in a condition of freedom as com- 
pared with the complicated obligations imposed by 
Civilisation. Savages, on the contrary, are under 
the tyranny of innumerable Customs which render 
their whole life a slavery from the cradle to the 
grave. And what is most remarkable is the irra- 
tional character of most of these Customs, and the 
difficulty of even imagining how they can have 
become established. They bear all the marks of 
an origin far distant in time — of a connection with 
doctrines which have been forgotton, and of con- 
ceptions which have run, as it were, to seed. They 
bear, in short, all the marks of long attrition, like 
the remnants of a bed of rock which has been 
broken up at a distant epoch of geological time, and 
has left no other record of itself than a few worn 
and incoherent fragments in some far-off conglo- 
merate. Just as these fragments are now held 



The Process of Degradation in Religion. 487 



together by common materials which are universally 
distributed, such as sand or lime, so the worn and 
broken fragments of old Religions are held together, 
in the shape of barbarous customs, by those common 
instincts and aspirations of the human Mind which 
follow it in all its stages, whether of growth or of 
decay. The rapidity of the processes of degrada- 
tion in Religion, and the extent to which they may 
go, depends on a great variety of conditions. It 
has gone very far indeed, and has led to the evolu- 
tion of Customs and Beliefs of the most destructive 
kind among races which, so far as we know, have 
never been exposed to external conditions neces- 
sarily degrading. The innate character of this 
tendency to corruption, arising out of causes in- 
herent in the nature of Man, becomes indeed all 
the more striking when we find that some of the 
most terrible practices connected with religious 
superstition, are practices which have become estab- 
lished among tribes which are by no means in the 
lowest physical condition, and who inhabit countries 
highly blest by Nature. Perhaps there is no 
example of this phenomenon more remarkable than 
the " customs" of Dahomey, a country naturally 
rich in products, and affording every facility for the 
pursuits of a settled and civilised life. Yet here 
we have those terrible Beliefs which demand the 
constant, the almost daily sacrifice of human life,. 



488 The Unity of Nature, 



with no other aim or purpose than to satisfy some 
imaginary Being with the sight of clotted gore and 
with the smell of putrefying human flesh. This is 
only an extreme and a peculiarly terrible example of 
a general law, the operation of which is more or less 
clearly seen in every one of the Religions of the 
heathen world, whether of the past or of the present 
time. In the very earliest ages in which we become 
acquainted with the customs of their worship, we 
find these in many respects strange and unaccount- 
able, except on the supposition that even then they 
had come from far, and had been subject to endless 
deviations and corruptions through ages of a long 
descent. 

Of no Religion is this more true than of that 
which was associated with the oldest Civilisation 
known to us — the Civilisation of Egypt. So strange 
is the combination here of simple and grand concep- 
tions with grotesque symbols and with degrading 
objects of immediate worship, that it has been the 
inexhaustible theme of curious explanations. Why 
a Snake or why a Dung-beetle should have been 
taken to represent the Divine Being, and why in 
the holiest recess of some glorious Temple we find 
-enshrined as the object of adoration the image or 
the coffin of some beast, or bird, or reptile, is a 
•question on which much learned ingenuity has been 
spent. It has been suggested, for example, that a 



The Origin of Animal Worship. 489 



conquering race, bringing with it a higher and a 
purer faith, suffered itself to adopt or to embody in 
its system the lower symbolism of a local worship. 
But this explanation only removes the difficulty — if 
it be one — a step farther back. Why did such suf- 
ferance arise ? why was such an adoption possible ? 
It was possible simply because there is an universal 
tendency in the human Mind to developments in 
the wrong direction, and especially in its spiritual 
conceptions to become more and more gross and 
carnal. 

Nor is it difficult to follow some, at least, of the 
steps of consequence, that is to say, the associations 
of thought, by which worship may become degraded 
when once any serious error has been admitted. 
Animal worship, for example, may possibly have 
begun with very high and very profound concep- 
tions. We are accustomed to regard it as a very 
grotesque and degraded worship, and so no doubt 
it was in its results. But if we once allow ourselves 
to identify the Divine Power in Nature with any 
one of its operations, if we seek for the visible 
presence of the Creator in any one of His creations, 
I do not know that we could choose any in which 
that Presence seems so imminent as in the wonder- 
ful Instincts of the lower animals. In a previous 
chapter we have seen what knowledge and what 
foreknowledge there is involved in some of these. 



490 



The Unity of Nature. 



We have seen how it often seems like direct Inspira- 
tion that creatures without the gift of Reason should 
be able to do more than the highest human Reason 
could enable us to do — how wonderful it is, for 
example, that their prevision and provision for the 
nurture and development of their young should 
cover the whole cycle of operations in that second 
work of creation which is involved in the Metamor- 
phoses of Insects — all this, when we come to think 
of it, may well seem like the direct working of the 
Godhead. We have seen in a former chapter that 
men of the highest genius in philosophical specula- 
tion, like Descartes, and men of the highest skill in 
the popular exposition of scientific ideas, like Pro- 
fessor Huxley, have been led by these marvels of 
Instinct to represent the lower animals as automata 
or machines. The whole force and meaning of this 
analogy lies in the conception that the work done by 
animals is like the work done by the mechanical con- 
trivances of men. We look always upon such work 
as done not by the machine but by the contriving 
Mind which is outside the machine, and from whom 
its adjustments are derived. Fundamentally, how- 
ever little it may be confessed or acknowledged, 
this is the same conception which, in a less scien- 
tific age, would take another form. What is seen 
in the action of an automaton is not the mechanism 
but the result. That result is the work of Mind, 



Possible Explanation of Animal Worship. ' 491 



which seems as if it were indwelling in the machine. 
In like manner, what is seen in animals is the won- 
derful things they do ; and what is not seen, and is 
indeed wholly incomprehensible, is the machinery 
by which they are made to do it. Moreover, it is 
a machinery having this essential distinction from 
all human machines, that it is endowed with Life, 
which in itself also is the greatest mystery of all. 

It is, therefore, no superficial observation of 
animals, but, on the contrary, a deep pondering on 
the wonders of their economy, which may have first 
suggested them to religious men as at once the Type 
and the Abode of that Agency which is supreme in 
Nature. I do not affirm as an historical fact that 
this was really the origin of Animal-worship, because 
that origin is not historically known, and, like the 
origin of Religion itself, it must be more or less a 
matter of speculation. Some animals may have 
become objects of worship from having originally 
been the subjects of sacrifice. The victim may have 
been so associated with the God to whom it was 
devoted as to become His accepted Symbol. The 
Ox and the Bull may well have been consecrated 
through this process of substitution. But no such 
explanation can be given in respect to many animals 
which have been worshipped as divine. Perhaps 
no further explanation need be sought than that 
which would be equally required to account for the 



49 2 The Unity of Nature. 



choice of particular plants, or particular birds and 
fishes, as the badges of particular tribes and families 
of men. Such badges were almost universal in 
early times, and many of them are still perpetuated 
in armorial bearings. The selection of particular 
animals in connection with worship would be deter- 
mined in different localities by a great variety of con- 
ditions. Circumstances purely accidental might deter- 
mine it. The occurrence, for example, in some parti- 
cular region of any animal with habits which are at 
once curious and conspicuous, would sufficiently ac- 
count for the choice of it as the Symbol of whatever 
idea these habits might most readily suggest or sym- 
bolise. It is remarkable, accordingly, that in some 
cases, at least, we can see the probable causes which 
have led to the choice of certain creatures. The Egyp- 
tian Beetle, the Scarabseus, for example, represents 
one of those forms of Insect life in which the marvels 
of Instinct are at once very conspicuous and very 
curious. The characteristic habit of the Scarabseus 
Beetle is one which involves all that mystery of pre- 
vision for the development of the species which is 
common among insects, coupled with a patient and 
laborious perseverance in the work required, which 
does not seem directly associated with any mere 
appetite or with any immediate source of pleasure. 
The instinct by which this beetle chooses the material 
which is the proper nidus for its egg, the skill with 



The Degradation of Animal Worship. 493 



which it works that material into a form suitable for 
the purpose, and the industry with which it then 
rolls it along the ground till a suitable position is 
attained — all these are a striking combination of the 
wonders of Animal Instinct, and conspicuous indi- 
cation of the Spirit of Wisdom and of Knowledge 
which may well be conceived to be present in their 
work. 

But although it is in this way easy to imagine 
how some forms of Animal-worship may have had 
their origin in the first perception of what is really 
wonderful, and in the first admiration of what is 
really admirable, it is also very easy to see how, 
when once established, it would tend to rapid degra- 
dation. Wonder and reverence are not the only 
emotions which impel to worship. Fear and even 
horror, especially when accompanied with any 
mystery in the objects of alarm, are emotions 
suggesting, perhaps more than any, that low kind 
of worship which consists essentially in the idea 
of Deprecation. Some hideous and destructive 
animals, such as the Crocodile, may have become 
sacred objects neither on account of anything admir- 
able in their instincts nor on account of their 
destructiveness, but, on the contrary, because of 
being identified with an agency which is beneficent. 
To those who live in Egypt, the Nile is the peren- 
nial source of every blessing necessary to life. An 



494 



The Unity of Nature. 



animal so characteristic of that great River may well 
have been chosen simply as the Symbol of all that 
it was and of all that it gave to men. There is 
no mystery, therefore, in the Crocodile being held 
sacred in the worship of the God of Inundation. 
But there are other animals which have been 
widely invested with a sacred character, in respect 
to which no such explanation can be given. The 
worship of Serpents has been attributed to concep- 
tions of a very abstract character — with the circle, 
for example, into which they coil themselves con- 
sidered as an emblem of Eternity. But this is a 
conception far too transcendental and far-fetched 
to account either for the origin of this worship, or 
for its wide extension in the world. Serpents are 
not the only natural objects which present circular 
forms. Nor is this attitude of their repose, curious 
and remarkable though it be, the most striking 
peculiarity they present. They have been chosen, 
beyond any reasonable doubt, because of the horror 
and terror they inspire. For this, above all other 
creatures, they are prominent in Nature. For their 
deceptive colouring,— for their insidious approach, 
— for their deadly virus, — they have been taken as 
the type of spiritual poison in the Jewish narra- 
tive of the Fall. The power of inflicting almost 
immediate death, which is possessed by the most 
venomous Snakes, and that not by violence, but 



Auguste Comte' s Worship of Humanity.. 495 

by the infliction of a wound which in itself may 
be hardly visible, is a power which is indeed full 
of mystery even to the most cultivated scientific 
mind, and may well have inspired among men 
in early ages a desire to pacify the Powers of 
Evil. The moment this becomes the great aim and 
end of worship, a principle is established which is 
fertile in the development of every foul imagina- 
tion. Whenever it is the absorbing motive and 
desire of men to do that which may most gratify 
or pacify Malevolence, then it ceases to be at all 
wonderful that men should be driven by their reli- 
gion to sacrifices the most horrid, and to practices 
the most unnatural. 

But if we wish to see an illustration and an example 
of the power of all conceptions of a religious nature 
in the rapid evolution of unexpected consequences, 
we have such an example in the case of one man 
who has lived in our own time, and who still lives 
in the school which he has founded. I refer to 
Auguste Comte. It is well known that he denied 
the existence, or at least denied that we can have 
any knowledge of the existence, of such a Being as 
other men mean by God. Mr. John Stuart Mill has 
insisted with much earnestness and with much force 
that, in spite of this denial, Auguste Comte had a 
Religion. He says it was a Religion without a God. 
But the truth is, that it was a Religion having both a 



496 



The Unity of Nature. 



creed and an ideal object of worship. That ideal 
object of worship was an abstract conception of the 
Mind so definitely invested with Personality that 
Comte himself gave to it the title of The Great Being 
(Grand Etre). The abstract conception thus per- 
sonified was the abstract conception of Humanity — 
Man considered in his past, his present, and his future. 
Clearly this is an intellectual Fetish. It is not the 
worship of a Being known or believed to have any 
real existence. It is the worship of an Idea shaped 
and moulded by the Mind, and then artificially clothed 
with the attributes of Personality. It is the worship 
of an article manufactured by the imagination, just 
as Fetishism, in its strictest meaning, is the worship 
of an article manufactured by the hand. Nor is it 
difficult to assign to it a place in that classification 
of Religions in which a loose signification has been 
assigned to the term Fetishism. The worship of 
Humanity is merely one form of Animal-worship. 
Indeed, Comte himself specially included the whole 
Animal Creation. It is the worship of the Creature 
Man as the consummation, of all other Creatures, 
with all the marvels and all the unexhausted possi- 
bilities of his moral and intellectual nature. 

The worship of this Creature may certainly be in the 
nature of a Religion, as much higher than other forms 
of Animal-worship as Man is higher than a Beetle or an 
Ibis, or a Crocodile, or a Serpent. But so also, on the 



Worship of Humanity Doomed to Degradation. 497 

other hand, it may be a Religion as much lower than 
the worship of other animals, in proportion as Man 
can be wicked and vicious in a sense in which the 
Beasts cannot. Obviously therefore such a worship 
would be liable to special causes of degradation. 
We have seen it to be one of the great peculiarities 
of Man, as distinguished from the lower animals, 
that whilst they always obey and fulfil the highest 
law of their Being, there is no similar perfect obedi- 
ence in the case of Man. On the contrary, he often 
uses his special powers with such perverted ingenuity 
that they reduce him to a condition more miserable 
and more degraded than the condition of any Beast. 
It follows that the worship of Humanity must, as 
a Religion, be liable to corresponding degradation. 
The Philosopher, or the Teacher, or the Prophet who 
may first personify this abstract conception, and 
enshrine it as an object of worship, may have before 
him nothing but the highest aspects of human nature 
and its highest aspirations. Mill has seen and has 
well expressed the limitations under which alone 
such a worship could have any good effect. " That 
the ennobling power of this grand conception may 
have its full efficacy, he should, with Comte, regard 
the Grand Eire, Humanity or Mankind, as composed 
in the past solely of those who, in every age and 
variety of position, have played their part worthily 

in life. It is only as thus restricted that the aggregate 

2 1 



49§ 



The Unity of Nature. 



of our species becomes an object worthy of our 
veneration." # This, no doubt, was Comte's own 
idea. But how are his disciples and followers to be 
kept up to the same high standard of conception ? 
Comte seems to have been personally a very high- 
minded and a very pure-minded man. His morality 
was austere, almost ascetic, and his spirit of devotion 
found delight in the spirit of the Christian Mystics. 
Yet even in his hands the development of his con- 
ceptions led him to results eminently irrational, 
although it cannot be said that they were ever 
degrading or impure. But we have only to consider 
how comparatively rare are the examples of the 
highest human excellence, and how common and 
prevailing are the vices and weaknesses of Humanity, 
to see how terrible would be the possibilities and the 
probabilities of corruption in a Religion which had 
Man for the highest object of its worship. 

Nor is this all that is to be said on the inevitable 
tendency to degradation which must attend any wor- 
ship of Humanity. Not only are the highest forms 
of human virtue rare, but even when they do occur, 
they are very apt to be rejected and despised of men. 
Power and strength, however vicious in its exercise, 
almost always receives the homage of the world. 
The human Idols, therefore, who would be chosen as 
Symbols in the worship of Humanity would often be 

* Mill's " Comte and Positivism," p. 136. 



The Chosen Heroes of Humanity. 499 



those who set the very worst examples to their 
Kind. Perhaps no better illustration of this could 
be found than the history of Napoleon Buonaparte. 
I think it is impossible to follow that history, as 
it is now known, without coming to the conclusion 
that in every sense of the word he was a bad 
man — unscrupulous, false, and mean. But his 
intellect was powerful, whilst his force and energy 
of character were tremendous. These qualities 
alone, exhibited in almost unexampled military 
success, were sufficient to make him the Idol of 
many minds. And as mere success secured for 
him this place, so nothing but failure deprived 
him of it. Not a few of the chosen heroes of 
Humanity have been chosen for reasons but little 
better. Comte himself, seeing this danger, and with 
an exalted estimate and ideal of the character of 
Womanhood, had laid it down that it would be best 
to select some woman as the symbol, if not the 
object, of private adoration in the worship of 
Humanity. The French Revolutionists selected a 
woman, too, and we know the kind of woman that 
they chose. It may be wise, perhaps, to set aside 
this famous episode in a fit of national insanity as 
nothing more than a profane joke ; but the develop- 
ments of Anthropomorphism in the mythology of the 
Pagan world are a sufficient indication of the kind 



5oo 



The Unity of Nature. 



of worship which the worship of Humanity would 
certainly tend to be. 

The result, then, of this analysis of that in which 
all Religion essentially consists, and of the objects 
which it selects, or imagines, or creates for worship, 
is to show that in Religion above all other things 
the processes of Evolution are especially liable to 
work in the direction of Degradation. That analysis 
shows how it is that in the domain of religious 
conceptions, even more than in any other domain of 
thought, the work of Development must be rapid, 
because in the absence of Revelation or the teach- 
ings of Authority, fancy and imagination have no 
guide and are under no restraint. 

When, now, we pass from the phenomena which 
Religion presents in the present day to what we 
know of its phenomena in the earliest historic times, 
the conclusions we have reached receive abundant 
confirmation. Of the origin of Religion, indeed, as 
we have already seen, History can tell us nothing, 
because, unless the Mosaic narrative be accepted, 
there is no history of the origin of Man. But the 
origin of particular systems of Religion does come 
within the domain of History, and the testimony it 
affords is always to the same effect. In regard to 
them we have the most positive evidence that they 
have been uniformly subject to Degradation. All 
the great Religions of the world which can be traced 



Tendency to Decline of all Religions. 501 



to the teaching or influence of individual men have 
steadily declined from the teaching of their Founders. 
In India it has been one great business of Christian 
missionaries and of Christian governors, in their 
endeavours to put an end to cruel and barbarous 
customs, to prove to the corrupt disciples of an 
ancient Creed that its first Prophets or Teachers had 
never held the doctrines from which such customs 
arise, or that these customs are a gross miscon- 
ception and abuse of the doctrine which had been 
really taught. Whether we study what is now 
held by the disciples of Buddha, of Confucius, or of 
Zoroaster, it is the same result. Wherever we can 
arrive at the original teaching of the known Founders 
of religious systems, we find that teaching uniformly 
higher, more spiritual, than the teaching now. 

The same law has affected Christianity, with this 
difference only, that alone of all the Historical Reli- 
gious of the world it has hitherto shown an unmis- 
takable power of perennial revival and reform. But 
we know that the processes of corruption had begun 
their work even in the lifetime of the Apostles ; and 
every Church in Christendom will equally admit the 
general fact, although each of them will give a 
different illustration of it. Mahommedanism, which 
is the last and latest of the great Historical Religions 
of the world, shows a still more remarkable phenome- 
non. The corruption in this case began not only 



502 



The Unity of Nature. 



in the lifetime, but in the life of the Prophet and 
Founder of that Religion. Mahomet was himself his 
own most corrupt disciple. In the earliest days of 
his mission he was best as a Man and greatest as a 
Teacher. His life was purer and his doctrine more 
spiritual when his voice was a solitary voice crying 
in the wilderness, than when it was joined in chorus 
by the voice of many millions. In his case the 
progress of Development in a wrong direction was 
singularly distinct and very rapid. Nor is the cause 
obscure. The spirit of Mahomet may well have 
been in close communion with the Spirit of all truth, 
when, like St. Paul at Athens, his heart was first 
stirred within him as he saw his Arabian country- 
men wholly given to idolatry. Such deep impres- 
sions on some everlasting truth — such overpowering 
convictions — are in the nature of Inspiration. The 
intimations it gives and the impulses it communicates 
are true in thought and righteous in motive, in exact 
proportion as the reflecting surfaces of the human 
Mind are accurately set to the lights which stream 
from Nature. This is the Adjustment which gives 
all their truthfulness to the intimations of the Senses ; 
which gives all its wisdom and foresight to the 
wonderful work of Instinct; which gives all their 
validity to the processes of Reason ; which is the 
real source of all the achievements of Genius, 
and which on the highest level of all, has made 



* 



Source of the Declension of Mahometanism. 503 

some men the inspired Prophets of the Oracles of 
God. 

But this is the tenderest of all Adjustments — the 
most delicate, the most easily disturbed. When this 
Adjustment is, as it were, mechanical, as it is in the 
lower animals, then we have the limited, but, within 
its own sphere, the perfect wisdom of the Beasts. 
But when this Adjustment is liable to distortion by 
the action of a Will which is to some extent self- 
determined and is also to a large extent degraded, 
when the real Inspiration is not from without, but 
from within — then the reflecting surfaces of Mind 
are no longer set true to the Light of Nature ; and 
then, " If the light within us be darkness, how great 
is that darkness!" Hence it is that one single 
mistake or misconception as to the nature and 
work of Inspiration is, and must be, a mistake of 
tremendous consequence. And this was Mahomet's 
mistake. He thought that the source of his Inspi- 
ration was direct, immediate, and personal. He 
thought that even the very words in which his 
own impulses were embodied were dictated by the 
Angel Gabriel. He thought that the Supreme 
Authority which spoke through him when he 
proclaimed that " the Lord God Almighty was one 
God, the Merciful, the Compassionate," was the 
same which also spoke to him when he proclaimed 
that it was lawful, for him to take his neighbour's 
wife. From such an abounding well-spring of 



D°4 



The Unity of Nature. 



delusion the most bitter waters were sure to come. 
How different this idea of the methods in which the 
Divine Spirit operates upon the minds of men from 
the idea held on the same subject by that great 
Apostle of our Lord, whose work it was to spread 
among the Gentile world those religious conceptions 
which had so long been the special heritage of one 
peculiar people ! How cautious St. Paul is when 
expressing an opinion not directly sanctioned by an 
authority higher than his own ! " I think also that 
I have the Spirit of God." The injunction, " Try 
the spirits whether they be of God," is one which 
never seems to have occurred to Mahomet. The 
consequences were what might have been expected. 
The utterances of his Inspiration when he was 
hiding in the caves of Mecca were better, purer, 
higher than those which he continued to pour forth 
when, after his flight to Medina, he became a great 
Conqueror and a great Ruler. From the very first 
indeed he breathed the spirit of personal anger 
and malediction on all who disbelieved his message. 
This root of bitterness was present from the begin- 
ning. But its developments were indeed prodigious. 
It was the animating spirit of precepts without number 
which, in the minds and in the hands of his ruthless 
followers, have inflicted untold miseries for twelve 
hundred years on some of the fairest regions of the 
Globe. 



Buddhism a Reform of Brahminism. 505 

Passing now from the evidence of the law of 
corruption and decline which is afforded by this 
last and latest of the great Historical Religions of 
the world, we hnd the same evidence in those of a 
much older date. In the first place, all the Found- 
ers of those Religions were themselves nothing but 
Reformers. In the second place, the reforms they 
instituted have themselves all more or less again 
yielded to new developments of decay. The great 
Prophets of the world have all been men of Inspira- f 
tion or of Genius who were revolted by the corrup- 
tions of some pre-existing system, and who desired 
to restore some older and purer faith. The form 
which their reformation took was generally deter- 
mined, as all strong revolts are sure to be. by 
violent reaction against some prominent conception 
or some system of practice which seemed, as it 
were, an embodiment of its corruption. In this 
way only can we account for the peculiar direction 
taken by the teaching of that one great historical 
Religion which is said to have more disciples than 
any other in the world. Buddhism was in its origin 
•a reform of Brahminism. In that system the Beliefs 
of a much older and simpler age had become hid 
under the rubbish-heaps of a most corrupt develop- 
ment. Nowhere perhaps in the world had the 
work of Evolution been richer in the growth of 
briers and thorns. It had forged the iron bonds 



506 



The Unity of Nattm 



of Caste, one of the very worst inventions of an evil 
imagination; and it had degraded worship into a 
complicated system of sacrifice and of ceremonial 
observances. 

There seems to be no doubt that the teach- 
ing of the reformer Sakya Muni (Buddha) was a 
revolt and a reform. It was a reassertion of the 
paramount value of . a Life of Righteousness. But 
the intellectual conceptions which are associated 
with this great ethical and spiritual reform had. 
within themselves the germs of another cycle of 
decay. These conceptions seem to have taken 
their form from the very violence of the revulsion 
which they indicate and explain. The peculiar 
tenet of Buddhism, which is or has been interpreted 
to be a denial of any Divine Being or of personal 
or individual Immortality, seems the strangest of all 
doctrines on which to recommend a life of virtue, 
of self-denial, and of religious contemplation. But 
the explanation is apparently to be found in the 
extreme * and ridiculous developments which the 
doctrines of Divine Personality and of individual 
Immortality had taken under the Brahminical 
system. These developments do indeed seem 
almost incredible, if we did not know from many 
other examples the incalculable wanderings of the 
human imagination in the domain of religious 
thought. The doctrine of the transmigration of 
Souls at death into the bodies of Beasts was a 



Extravagances of Buddhism Accounted for. 507 



doctrine pushed to such extravagances of concep- 
tion, and yet believed in with such intense convic- 
tion, that pious Brahmins did not dare even to 
breathe the open air lest by accident they should 
destroy some invisible animalcule in which was 
embodied the Spirit of their ancestors. Such a 
notion of Immortality might well oppress and afflict 
the spirit with a sense of intolerable fatigue. Nor 
is it difficult to understand how that desire of com- 
plete Attainment, which is, after all. the real hope of 
Immortality, should have been driven to look for 
it rather in reabsorption into some one universal 
Essence, and so to reach at last some final Rest 
Freedom from the burden of the flesh, rendered 
doubly burdensome by the repeated cycles of animal 
existence which lay before the Brahmin, was the 
end most naturally desired. For indeed, complete 
annihilation might well be the highest aspiration of 
souls who had before them such conceptions of 
personal Immortality and its gifts. 

A similar explanation is probably the true one of the 
denial of any God. A prejudice had arisen against 
the verv idea of a Divine Beincf from the concomitant 
ideas which had become associated with Personality. 
The original Buddhist denial of a God was pro- 
bably, in his heart of hearts, merely a denial of the 
grotesque limitations which had been associated with 
the popular conception of Him. It was a devout 



5 o8 



The Unity of Nature. 



and religious aspect of that most unphilosophical 
negation which in our own days has been called the 
" Unconditioned." In short, it was only a meta- 
physical, and not an irreligious, Atheism. But 
although this was probably the real meaning of the 
Buddhistic Atheism in the mind of its original 
teachers, and although this meaning has reappeared 
and has found intelligent expression among many 
of its subsequent expounders, it was in itself one 
of those fruitful germs of error which are fatal in 
any system of Religion. The negation of any 
Divine Being or Agency, at least under any aspect 
or condition conceivable by Man, makes a vacuum 
which nothing else can fill. Or rather, it may be 
said to make a vacuum which every conceivable 
imagination rushes in to occupy. Accordingly 
Buddha himself seems to haye taken the place of 
a Divine Being in the worship of his followers. 
His was a real Personality — his was the Ideal Life. 
All history proves that no abstract system of 
doctrine, no mere rule of life, no dreamy aspiration, 
however high, can serve as an object of worship 
for any length of time. But a great and a good 
Man can be always deified. And so it has been 
with Buddha. Still this deification was, as it were, 
an usurpation. The worship of himself was no 
part of the Religion he taught, and the vacuum 
which he had created in speculative Belief was one 



Brahminical Worship of the Heaven- Father. 509 



which his own Image, even with all the swellings 
of tradition, was inadequate to fill. And so 
Buddhism appears to have run its course through 
every stage of mystic madness, of gross idolatry, 
and of true fetish-worship, until, in India at least, 
it seems likely to be re-absorbed in the Brahminism 
from which it originally sprang. 

And so we are carried back to the origin of that 
great Religion, Brahminism, which already in the 
sixth or seventh century before the Christian era 
' had become so degraded as to give rise to the revolt 
of Buddha. The course of its development can be 
traced in an elaborate literature which may extend 
over a period of about 2000 years. That develop- 
ment is beyond all question one of the greatest 
interest in the history of Religion, because it con- 
cerns a region and a race which have high traditional 
claims to be identified with one of the most ancient 
homes, and one of the most ancient families of Man. 
And surely it is a most striking result of modern in- 
quiry that in this, one of the oldest literatures of the 
world, we find that the most ancient religious appella- 
tion is Heaven-Father, and that the words " Dyaus- 
pitar" in which this idea is expressed are the etymolo- 
gical origin of Jupiter — Zevs irarrip — the name for the 
supreme Deity in the mythology of the Greeks.* 

We must not allow any preconceived ideas to 

* "'Hibbert Lectures, :J by Max Muller. 



The Unity of Nature, 



obscure the plain evidence which arises out of this 
simple fact. We bow to the authority of Sanskrit 
scholars when they tell us of it. But we shall 
do well to watch the philosophical explanations 
with which they may accompany their intimations 
of its import. Those who approach the subject 
with the assumption that the Idea of a Divine 
Being or a Superhuman Personality must be a 
derivative, and cannot be a primary conception, 
allow all their language to be coloured by the 
theory that vague perceptions of "The Invisible" 
or " The Infinite," in rivers, or in mountains, or in 
sun and moon and stars, were the earliest religious 
conceptions of the human Mind. But this theory 
cannot be accepted by those who remember that 
there is nothing in Nature so near to us as our own 
nature, — nothing so mysterious and yet so intelli- 
gible, — nothing so invisible, yet so suggestive of 
energy and of power over things that can be seen. 
Nothing else in Nature speaks to us so constantly or 
so directly. Neither the Infinite nor the Invisible 
contains any religious element at all, unless as con- 
ditions of a Being of which invisibility and infinitude 
are attributes. There is no probability that any 
abstract conceptions whatever about the nature or 
properties of material Force can have been among 
the earliest conceptions of the human Mind. Still 
less is it reasonable to suppose that such concep- 



The True Idea of the Godhead in Christianity. 511 



tions were more natural and more easy conceptions 
than those founded on our own Personality and on 
the Personality of Parents. 

Yet it seems as if it were in deference to this 
theory that Professor Max Mtiller is disposed to 
deprecate the supposition that the " Heaven-Father" 
of the earliest Vedic Hymns is rightly to be under- 
stood as having meant " what we mean by God." 
Very probably indeed it may have meant some- 
thing much more simple. But not the less on that 
account it may have meant something quite as true. 
I do not know, indeed, why we should set any very 
high estimate on the success which has attended the 
most learned Theologians, in giving anything like 
form or substance to our conceptions of the God- 
head. Christianity solves the difficulty by present- 
ing, as the type of all true conceptions on the subject, 
the image of a Divine Humanity, and the history 
of a perfect Life. In like manner, those methods 
•of representing the character and attributes of the 
Almighty, which were employed to teach the Jewish 
people, were methods all founded on the same prin- 
ciple of a sublime Anthropopsychism. In the New 
Testament there are not less sublime Similitudes, 
in which the Godhead is identified with the highest 
and holiest conceptions which we can derive from 
the material or the spiritual world. Such are the 
passages, "God is Love," and again " God is Light, 



The Unity of Nature. 



and in Him is no Darkness at all." But when we 
come to the abstract definitions of subsequent 
Theology, they invariably end either in self-contra- 
dictions, or in words in which beauty of rhythm 
takes the place of intelligible meaning. Probably 
no body of men ever came to draw up such defini- 
tions with greater advantages than the Reformers 
of the English Church. They had before them all 
the sublime imagery of the Prophets — all the pro- 
found similitudes of the Apostles — all the traditions 
of the Christian world — all the language of Philo- 
sophy — all the subtleties of the Schools. Yet, of 
the Godhead, they can only say as a negative 
definition, that God is " without body, parts, or 
passions." But, if by " passions " we are to under- 
stand all mental affections, this definition is not only 
in defiance of the whole language of the Jewish and 
of the Christian Scriptures, but in defiance also of 
all that is conceivable of the BeinQ; who is the 
Author of all good, and the fountain of all love, but 
who hates evil, and is angry with the wicked every 
day. A great master of the English tongue has 
given another definition in which, among other 
things, it is affirmed that the attributes of God are 
" incommunicable." * Yet, at least, all the good 
attributes of all creatures must be conceived as 
communicated to them by their Creator, in whom 
all fulness dwells. 

* J. H. Newman, "Idea of a University." p. 60. 



Doubtftd Superiority of Modern Ideas of God. 513. 

I do not know, therefore, by what title we 
are to assume that "what we mean by God" is 
certainly so much nearer the truth than the sim- 
plest conceptions of a Primeval Age. It is at 
least possible that in that Age there may have 
been intimations of the Divine Personality, and 
of the Divine Presence which we have not now. 
Moreover, there may have been developments of 
error in this high matter, which may well shake 
our confidence in the unquestionable superiority of 
" what we mean by God " over what may have been 
meant and understood by our earliest fathers in 
respect to the Being whom they adored. Some 
conceptions of the Divine 3eing which have been 
prevalent in the Christian Church, have been formed 
upon theological traditions so questionable that the 
developments of them have been among the heaviest 
burdens of the Faith. It is not too much to say 
that some of the doctrines derived from scholastic 
Theology and once most widely accepted in the 
Christian Church— such, for example, as the fate 
of unbaptized Infants — are doctrines which pre- 
sent the nature and character of the Godhead in 
aspects as irrational as they are repulsive. One of 
the most remarkable schools of Christian -thought 
which has arisen in recent times is that- which has. 
made the idea of the "Fatherhood of God" the basis 

of its distinctive teaching. Yet it is nothing but a. 

2 K 



5U 



The Unity of Nature. 



reversion to the simplest of all ideas, the most rudi- 
mentary of all experiences — that which takes the 
functions and the authority of a Father as the most 
natural image of the Invisible and Infinite Being to 
whom we owe "life and breath and all things." In 
the facts of Vedic literature, as now sifted and pre- 
sented to us by scholars, when we carefully separate 
these facts from theories about them, there is really 
no symptom of any time when the idea of some 
Living Being in the nature of God had not yet been 
attained. On the contrary the earliest indications 
of this conception are indications of the sublimest 
character, and the process of Evolution seems dis- 
tinctly to have been a process not of an ascending 
but of a descending order. Thus it appears that 
the great appellative " Dyaus," which in the earliest 
Vedic literature is masculine and stood for " The 
Bright or Shining One," or the Living Being whose 
dwelling is the Light, had in later times become a 
feminine and stood for nothing but the sky.* It is 
quite evident that in the oldest times of the Aryan 
race, in so far as those times have left us any record, 
not only had the idea of a Personal God been fully 
conceived, but such a Being had been described, and 
addressed in language and under symbols which are 
comparable with the sublimest imagery in the Visions 
of Patmos. How firmly, too, and how naturally 

* "Hibbert Lectures," pp. 276. 277. 



The Vedic Deifications of N attire. 5 1 5 



these conceptions of a God were rooted in the 
analogies of our own human Personality is attested 
by the additional fact that Paternity was the earliest 
Vedic idea of Creation, and Dyaus was invoked not 
only as the Heaven-Father but specially as the 
Dyaush pita ganita," which is the Sanskrit equiva- 
lent of the Greek Zeu? iraT7)p jeverrjp. 

When, again, we are told by Sanskrit scholars 
that the earliest religious conceptions of the Aryan 
race, as exhibited in the Veda, were Pantheistic, 
and that the Gods they worshipped were " Deifica- 
tions " of the Forces or Powers of Nature, we are 
to remember that this is an interpretation and not 
a fact. It is an interpretation, too, which assumes 
the familiarity of the human mind in the ages of 
its infancy with one of the most doubtful and 
difficult conceptions of modern science — namely, 
the abstract conception of Energy or Force as an 
inseparable attribute of Matter. The only fact, 
divested of all preconceptions, which these scholars 
have really ascertained is, that in compositions 
which are confessedly poetical the Energies of 
Nature were habitually addressed as the Energies 
of Personal or Living Beings. But this fact does 
not in the least involve the supposition that the 
Energies of Nature which are thus addressed had, 
at some still earlier epoch, been regarded under the 
aspect of Material Forces, and had afterwards come 



5i6 



The Unity of Nature. 



to be Personified ; nor does it in the least involve 
the other supposition that, when so Personified, they 
were really regarded as so many different Beings 
absolutely separate and distinct from each other. 
Both of these suppositions may indeed be matter 
of argument ; but neither of them can be legiti- 
mately assumed. They are, on the contrary, both of 
them open to the most serious, if not to insuperable 
objections. As regards the first of them — that the 
earliest human conceptions of Nature were of that 
most abstruse and difficult kind which consists in 
the idea of Material Force without any living em- 
bodiment or abode, I have already indicated the 
grounds on which it seems in the highest degree 
improbable. As regards the second supposition, 
viz., that when Natural Forces came to be Personi- 
fied each one of them was regarded as the embodi- 
ment of a separate and distinct Divinity — this is 
a most unsafe interpretation of the language of 
poetry. The purest Monotheism has a Pantheistic 
side. To see all things in God is very closely 
related to seeing God in all things. The giving 
of separate names to diverse manifestations of one 
Divine Power may pass into Polytheism by in- 
sensible decrees. But it would be a most erroneous 
conclusion from the use of such names at a very 
early stage in the history of religious development, 
that those who so employed them had no conception 
of One Supreme Being. In the Philosophy of 



The Central Idea of Brahminism. 



517 



Brahminism even, in the midst of its most extrava- 
gant Polytheistic developments, not only has this 
idea been preserved, but it has been taught and held 
as the central idea of the whole system. "There 
is but one Being — no second." Nothing really 
exists but the one Universal Spirit, called Brahmin; 
and whatever appears to exist independently is 
identical with that Spirit.* This is the uncom- 
promising creed of true Brahminism. If, then, this 
creed can be retained even amidst the extravagant 
* Polytheism of later Hindu corruptions, much more 
easily could it be retained in the early Pantheism 
of the Vedic Hymns. 

There is, however, one kind of evidence remain- 
ing, which may be said to be still within the domain 
of history, and that is the evidence derived from 
Language, from the structure and etymology of 
words. This evidence carries us a long way further 
back, even to the time when Language was in the 
course of its formation, and long before it had been 
reduced to writing. From this evidence, as we find 
it in the facts reported respecting the earliest forms 
of Aryan speech, it seems certain that the most 
ancient conceptions of the energies of Nature were 
conceptions of Personality. In that dim and far-off 
time, when our pre-historic ancestors were speaking 
in a language long anterior to the formation of the 
oldest Sanskrit, we are told that they called the Sun 

* Professor Monier Williams, " Hinduism,' 3 p. 11. 



5'8 



The Unity of Nature. 



the Illuminator, or the Warmer, or the Nourisher \ 
the Moon, the Measurer ; the Dawn, the Awakener ; 
the Thunder, the Roarer ; the Rain, the Rainer ; the 
Fire, the Quick-Runner. # We are told further that 
in these Personifications the earliest Aryans did 
not imagine them as possessing the material or 
corporeal Forms of Humanity, but only that the 
activities they exhibited were most easily conceived 
as comparable with our own. Surely this is a fact 
which is worth volumes of speculation. What was. 
most easy and most natural then, must have been 
most easy and most natural from the beginning. 
With such a propensity in the earliest men of whom 
we have any authentic record to see personal agency 
in everything, and with the general impression of 
unity and subordination under one system which is 
suggested by all the phenomena of Nature, it does 
not seem very difficult to suppose that the funda- 
mental conception of all Religion may have been in 
the strictest s % ense primeval. 

But the earliest records of Aryan worship and 
of Aryan speech, are not the only evidences we 
have of the comparative- sublimity of the earliest 
known conceptions of the Divine Nature. The 
Egyptian records are older still ; and some of 
the oldest are also the most sublime. A hymn 
to the risingf and setting sun, which is contained 
in the 125th chapter of the " Book of the Dead/ 5, 

* Max Miiller, " Hibbert Lectures," 1878, p. 193. 



The Ancient Egyptian Idea of God. 519 

is said by Egyptian scholars to be " the most 
ancient piece of poetry in the literature of the: 
world.""* In this hymn the Divine Deity is de- 
scribed as the Maker of Heaven and of Earth, as 
the Self-existent One ; and the elementary Forces of 
Nature, under the curious and profound expression 
of the " Children of Inertness," are described as His 
instruments in the rule and government of Nature.f 
Nor is it less remarkable that these old Egyptians 
seem to have grasped the idea of Law and Order as 
a characteristic method of the Divine government. 
He who alone is truly the Living One, is adored 
as living in the Truth, and in Justice considered as 
the unchanging and unchangeable Rule of Right 
in the Moral World, and of Order in Physical Cau- 
sation. J The same grand conception has been- 
traced in the Theology of the Vedas. The result 
of all this historical evidence may be given in the 
words of M. Renouf : " It is incontestably true that 
the sublimer portions of the Egyptian Religion are 
not the comparatively late result of a process of 
development or elimination from the grosser. The 
sublimer portions are demonstrably ancient ; and 
the last stage of the Egyptian Religion, that known 
to the Greek and Latin writers, was by far the 
grossest and most corrupt." 

* Renouf, " Hibbert Lectures," 1879, P- l 97- 

+ Ibid., pp. 198, 199. % Ibid., pp. 119, 120, 



CHAPTER XIII. 



Recapitulations and Conclusions. 

£ N a previous chapter I have observed how 
little we think of the assumptions which are 
involved in putting such questions as that re- 
specting the origin of Religion. And here we have 
■ come to a point in our investigations at which it 
is very needful to remember again what some of 
these assumptions are. In order to do so let us 
look back for a moment and see where we stand. 

We have found the clearest evidence that there 
is a special tendency in religious conceptions to run 
into developments of corruption and decay. We 
have seen the best reason to believe that the Reli- 
gion of Savages, like their other peculiarities, is the 
result of this kind of evolution. We have found in 
the most ancient records of the Aryan language 
proof that the indications of religious thought are 
higher, simpler,' and purer as we go back in time, 
until at last, in the very oldest compositions of 
human speech which have come down to us, we find 
the Divine Being spoken of in the sublime language 
which forms the opening of the Lord's Prayer. The 
date in absolute chronology of the oldest Vedic 
literature does not seem to be known. There is a 



First Inventions of Man the most Wonderful. 521 



wide discrepancy between hfgh authorities. Pro- 
fessor Max Miiller considers that it may possibly 
take us back 5000 years/" This is probably an 
extreme estimate, and Professor Monier Williams 
seems to refer the most ancient Vedic Hymns to 
a period not much more remote than 1500 B.c.t 
But whatever that date may be, or the correspond- 
ing date of any other very ancient literature, such as 
the Chinese, or that of the oldest Egyptian papyri, 
when we go beyond these dates we enter upon a 
period when we are absolutely without any historical 
evidence whatever, not only as to the history of 
Religion, but as to the history and condition of 
Mankind. We do not know even approximately 
the time during which he has existed. We do not 
know the place or the surroundings of his birth. 
We do not know the steps by which his knowledge 
<l grew from more to more." All we can see with 
certainty is that the earliest inventions of Mankind 
are the most wonderful that the race has ever made. 
The first beginnings of human Speech must have 
had their origin in powers of the highest order. 
On this subject there is a dangerous ambiguity in 
the theories of Scientific Etymology. Very often 
they seem to imply that Speech is the cause instead 
of being the consequence of Intellectual Conceptions. 

* " Hibbert Lectures," p. 216. 
t " Hinduism," p. 19. 



522 



The Unity of Nature. 



From, the first it has be<§n Mind that has informed 
the Voice, and not Voice that has informed the 
Mind. Associated ideas have preceded associated 
sounds. It is not Language that has made Thought 
possible. It is Thought that has built up Lan- 
guage as an embodiment of itself. The function of 
Speech is not to originate Conceptions, but to ex- 
press them, and to make them easy of communica- 
tion and exchange. And so all the other acquire- 
ments of primeval times have been as it were the 
spontaneous growths and fruits of Mind. The first 
use of fire and the discovery of the methods by 
which it can be kindled ; the domestication of wild 
animals ; and above all the processes by which the 
various Cereals were first developed out of some 
wild Grasses — these are all discoveries with which 
in ingenuity and in importance no subsequent dis- 
coveries may compare. They are all unknown to 
History — all lost in the light of an effulgent Dawn. 
In speculating, therefore, on the origin of these 
things, we must make one or other of two assump- 
tions — either that Man always had the same mental 
faculties and the same fundamental intellectual con- 
stitution that he has now, or that there was a time 
when these faculties had not yet risen to the level 
of Humanity, and when his mental constitution was 
essentially inferior. 

On the first of these assumptions we proceed on 



Inconceivability of First Man as a Savage, 523 



the safe ground of inquiry from the known to the 
unknown. We handle a familiar thing ; we dissect 
a known structure ; we think of a known agency. 
We speculate only on the manner of its first be- 
haviour. Even in this process we must take a good 
deal for granted — we must imagine a good deal that 
is not easily conceivable. If we try to present to 
our own minds any distinct image of the first Man, 
whether we suppose him to have been specially 
created or gradually developed, we shall soon find 
that we are talking- about a Being and about a con- 
dition of things of which Science tells us nothing, 
and of which the Imagination even cannot form 
any definite conception. The temptation to think of 
that Being as a mere Savage is very great, and this 
theory underlies nine-tenths of all speculations on 
the subject. But, to say the very least, this may 
not be true, and valid reasons have been adduced 
to show that it is in the highest degree improbable. 
That the first Man should have been born with all 
the developments of Savagery, is as impossible as that 
he should have been born with all the developments 
of Civilisation. The next most natural resource we 
have is to think of the first Man as something like a 
Child. But no man has ever seen a Child which 
never had a Parent as human as itself, or some one 
to represent such a Parent. We can form no picture 
in our mind's eye of the mental condition of the first 



524 



The Unity of N a here. 



Man, if we suppose him to have had no communica- 
tion with, and no instruction from, some Intelligence 
other than his own. A Child that has never been 
taught anything, and has never seen example, is a 
creature of which we have no knowledge, and of 
which therefore we can form no definite conception. 

Our power of conceiving things is, of course, 
no measure of their possibility. But it may be 
well to observe where the impossibilities of con- 
ception are, or may be, of our own making. It 
is at least possible that the first Man may not 
have been born or created in the condition which 
we find to be so inconceivable. He may have 
been a Child, but having, what all other children 
have, some intimations of Authority and some 
acquaintance with its Source. At all events, let 
it be clearly seen that the denial of this possibility 
is an assumption ; and an assumption too which 
establishes an absolute and radical distinction be- 
tween Childhood as we know it,, and the inconceiv- 
able conditions of a Childhood which was either 
without Parents, or with Parents who were com- 
paratively Beasts. Professor Max M tiller has fancied 
our earliest forefathers as creatures who at first had 
to be " roused and awakened from mere staring and 
stolid wonderment," by certain objects " which set 
them for the first time musing, pondering, and 
thinking on the visions floating before their eyes." 



Inconceivability of a First Man as a Beast. 525 



This is a picture evidently framed on the assumption 
of a Fatherless Childhood — of a Being born into 
the world with all the innate powers of Man, but 
absolutely deprived of all direct communication with 
any Mind or Will analogous to his own. No such 
assumption is admissible as representing any reason- 
able probability. But at least such imaginings as 
these about our First Parents have reference to 
their external conditions only, and do not raise 
the additional difficulties which are involved in the 
supposition that the first Man was half a Beast. 

Very different is the case upon this other of 
the two assumptions which have been indicated 
above. On the assumption that there was .a time 
when Man was different in his own proper nature 
from that nature as we know it now — when he was 
merely an animal not yet developed into a Man — on 
this assumption another element of the unknown is 
introduced, which is an element of absolute confusion. 
It is impossible to found any reasoning upon data 
which are not only unknown, but are in themselves 
unintelligible and inconceivable. Now it seems as 
if many of those who speculate on the origin of Reli- 
gion have not clearly made up their minds whether 
they are proceeding on the first of these assumptions 
or on the second ; that is to say, on the assumption 
that Man has always been, in respect to Faculty, what 
he now is, or on the assumption that he was once a 



526 



The Unity of Nature, 



Beast. Perhaps, indeed, it would be strictly true 
to say that many of those who speculate on the 
origin of Religion proceed upon the last of these 
assumptions without avowing it, or even without 
distinctly recognising it themselves. It may be 
well, therefore, to point out here that on this assump- 
tion the question cannot be discussed at all. We 
must begin with Man as Man, when his develop- 
ment or his creation had made him what he is ; not 
indeed as regards the acquisitions of experience or 
the treasures of knowledge, but what he is in Faculty 
and in Power, in the structure and habit of his Mind, 
in the instincts of his intellectual and moral nature. 

But, as we have also seen in a former chapter,* 
there are two other assumptions between which we 
must choose. Besides assuming something as to 
the condition and the powers of the first Man, 
we must also make one or other of two assump- 
tions as to the existence or non-existence of a 
Being to whom his Mind stands in close relation. 
One is the assumption that there is no God ; and 
then the problem is, how Man came to invent one. 
The other is that there is a God ; and then the 
question is, whether He first formed, and how long 
He left His Creature without any intuition or reve- 
lation of Himself. 

It is really curious to observe in many specula- 
tions on the orio-in of Religion how unconscious the 

* Chap. XI., ante. 



Religion Unaccountable on the No-God Hypothesis. 527 



writers are that they are making any assumption at 
all on this subject. And yet in many cases the 
assumption distinctly is that, as an objective Reality, 
God does not exist, and that the conception of such 
a Being is built up gradually out of wonderings and 
guessings about "the Infinite" and "the Invisible." 

On this assumption I confess that it does not 
appear to me to be possible to give any satisfactory 
explanation of the origin of Religion. As a matter 
of fact, we see that the tendency to believe in divine 
or superhuman Beings is a universal tendency in 
the human Mind. As a matter of fact, also, we see 
that the conceptions which gather round this Belief 
— the ideas which grow up and are developed from 
one consequence to another respecting the character 
of these superhuman Personalities and their relations 
to Mankind — are beyond all comparison the most 
powerful agencies in moulding human nature for 
evil or for good. There is no question whatever 
about the fact that the most terrible and destructive 
Customs of barbarian and of savage life are customs 
more or less directly connected with the growth of 
religious superstitions. It was the perception of 
this fact which inspired the intense hatred of 
Religion, as it was known to him, which breathes 
in the memorable poem of Lucretius. In all litera- 
ture there is no single line more true than the famous 
line — "Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum." 



528 



The Unity of Natter e. 



Nor is it less certain, on the other hand, that the 
highest type of human virtue is that which has been 
exhibited in some of those whose whole inspiration 
and rule of life has been founded on religious faith. 
Religious conceptions have been historically the 
centre of all Authority, and have given their strength 
to all ideas of Moral Obligation. Accordingly, we 
see that the same hatred which inspired Lucretius 
against Religion because of its power for evil, now 
inspires other men against it because of its power 
for good. Those who wish to sever all the bonds 
which bind human society together, the State, the 
Church, the Family, and whose spirits are in fierce 
rebellion against all Law, human or divine, are, and 
must be, bitter enemies of Religion. The idea must 
be unendurable to them of a Ruler who cannot be 
defied, of a Throne which cannot be overturned, of 
a Kingdom which endureth throughout all genera- 
tions. The Belief in any Divine Personality as the 
source of the inexorable laws of Nature is a Belief 
which enforces, as nothing else can enforce, the idea 
of Obligation and the duty of Obedience. 

It is not possible, in the light of the Unity of 
Nature, to reconcile this close and obvious relation 
between religious conceptions and the highest con- 
ditions of human life with the supposition that these 
conceptions are nothing but a dream. The power 
exercised over the mind and conduct of Mankind, 



All Intelligible on the Supposition of a God. 529 



by the Belief in some Divine Personality with whom 
they have to do, is a power having all the marks 
that indicate an integral part of the System under 
which we live. But if we are to assume that this 
Belief does not represent a fact, and that its origin 
has been any other than a simple and natural per- 
ception of that fact, then this negation must be the 
groundwork of all our speculations on the subject, 
and must be involved, more or less directly, in every 
argument we use. But even on this assumption it 
is not a reasonable explanation of the fundamental 
postulates of all Religion — namely, the existence of 
superhuman Beings — to suppose that the idea of 
Personality has been evolved out of that which is 
Impersonal ; the idea of Will out of that which has 
no Intelligence ; the idea of Life out of that which 
does not contain it. 

On the other hand, if we make the only alternative 
assumption — namely, that there is a God, that is to 
say, a Supreme Being, who is the Author of Creation 
— then the origin of Man's perception of this fact 
ceases to have any mystery other than that which 
attaches to the origin of all the other elementary per- 
ceptions of his Mind and Spirit. Not a few of these 
perceptions tell him of realities which are as invisible 
as the Godhead. Of his own passions, and of the 
passions of other men, his perception is immediate — 

of his own love, of his own anger, of his own pos- 

2 1, 



530 



The Unity of Nature. 



session of just authority. The sense of o wing obe- 
dience may well be as immediate as the sense of a 
right to claim it. . Moreover, seeing the transcendent 
power of this perception upon his conduct, and, 
through his conduct, upon his fate, it becomes ante- 
cedently probable, in accordance with the analogies 
of Nature and of all other created Beings, that from 
the very first, and as part of the outfit of his nature, 
some knowledge was imparted to him of the exist- 
ence of his Creator, and of the duty which he owed 
to Him. 

Of the methods by which this knowledge was 
imparted to him, we are as ignorant as of the 
methods by which other innate perceptions were im- 
planted in him. But no special difficulty is involved 
in the origin of a perception which stands in such 
close relation to the Unity of Nature. It has been 
demanded indeed, as a postulate in this discussion, 
that we should discard all notions of antecedent 
probability— that we should take nothing for granted, 
except that Man started on his course furnished with 
what are called his Senses, and with nothing more. 
And this demand may be acceded to, provided it be 
well understood what our Senses are. If by this 
word we are to understand nothing more than the 
gates and avenues of approach through which we 
derive an impression of external objects — our sight, 
and touch, and smell, and taste, and hearing — then, 



The Authority of Stntctural Adjustment. 531 



indeed, it is the most violent of all assumptions that 
they are the only faculties by which knowledge is 
acquired. There is no need to put any disparage- 
ment on these Senses, or to undervalue the work 
they do. Quite the contrary. It has been shown 
in a former chapter how securely we may rest on 
the wonder and on the truthfulness of these Faculties 
as a pledge and guarantee of the truthfulness of other 
Faculties which are conversant with higher things. 
When we think of the Mechanism of the Eye, and of 
the inconceivable minuteness of the ethereal move- 
ments which that Organ enables us to separate and 
to discriminate at a glance, we get hold of an idea 
having an intense interest and a supreme import- 
ance. If Adjustments so fine and so true as these 
have been elaborated out of the Unities of Nature, 
whether suddenly by what we imagine as Creation, 
or slowly by what we call Development, then may 
we have the firmest confidence that the same Law 
of Natural Adjustment has prevailed in all the other 
Faculties of the perceiving and conceiving Mind. 
The whole structure of that Mind is, as it were, 
revealed to be a Structure which is in the nature 
of a Growth — a Structure whose very property and 
function it is to take in and assimilate the truths 
of Nature — and that in an ascending order, accord- 
ing to the rank of those truths in the System and 
Constitution of the Universe. In this connection 



532 



The Unity of Nature. 



of thought too great stress cannot be laid on the 
wonderful language of the Senses. In the light of 
it the whole Mind and Spirit of Man becomes one 
great mysterious Retina for reflecting the images of 
Eternal Truth. Our moral and intellectual percep- 
tions of things which in their very nature are invisi- 
ble, come home to us as invested with a new autho- 
rity. It is the authority of an Adjusted Structure — 
of a mental organisation which has been moulded 
by what we call natural causes — these being the 
causes on which the Unity of the World depends. 

And when we come to consider how this mould- 
ing, and the moulding of the human Body, deviates 
from that of the lower animals, we discover in the 
nature of this deviation a Law which cannot be 
mistaken. That Law points to the higher power 
and to the higher value in his economy of Faculties 
which lie behind the Senses. The human frame 
diverges from the frame of the Brutes, so far as the 
mere bodily senses are concerned, in the direction 
of greater helplessness and weakness. Man's sight 
is less piercing than the Eagle's. His hearing is 
less acute than the Owls or the Bat's. His sense 
of smell may be said hardly to exist at all when it is 
compared with the exquisite susceptibilities of the 
Dog and of the Deer, of the Weasel, or of the Fox. 
The whole principle and plan of structure in the 
Beasts which are supposed to be nearest to him in 



The Principle of the Human Mechanism. 533 



form, is a principle and a plan which is almost the 
converse of that on which his structure has been 
organised. The so-called man-like Apes are highly 
specialised ; Man on the contrary is as highly gene- 
ralised. They are framed to live almost entirely 
on trees, and to be dependent on arboreal products, 
which only a very limited area in the Globe can 
supply. Man is framed to be independent of all 
local conditions, except indeed those extreme con- 
ditions which are incompatible with the mainte- 
nance of Organic Life in any form. If it be true, 
therefore, that he is descended from some " arboreal 
animal with pointed ears," he has been modified 
during the steps of that descent on the principle of 
depending less and less on Senses such as the lower 
animals possess, and more and more on what may 
be called the Senses of his Mind. The unclothed 
and unprotected condition of the human body, the 
total absence of any organic weapon of defence, the 
want of teeth adapted even for prehension, and 
the same want of power for similar purposes in 
the hands and fingers — these are all changes and 
departures from the mere animal type which stand 
in obvious relation to the mental powers of Man. 
Apart from these, they are changes which would 
have placed the new Creature at a hopeless dis- 
advantage in the struggle for existence. It is not 
easy to imagine, — indeed we may safely say that it 



534 



The Unity of Nature. 



is impossible to conceive — the condition of things 
during any intermediate steps in such a process. 
It seems as if there could be no safety until it 
had been completed- — until the enfeebled Physical 
Organisation had been supported and reinforced 
by the new capacities for Knowledge and Design. 

This, however, is not the point on which we are 
dwelling now. We are not now speculating on 
the origin of Man. We are considering him only 
as he is, and as he must have been since he was 
Man at all. And in that structure as it is, we see 
that the bodily Senses have a smaller relative 
importance than in the Beasts. To the Beasts 
these Senses tell them all they know. To us they 
speak but little compared with all that our Spirit 
of Interpretation gathers from them. But that 
Spirit of Interpretation is in the nature of a Sense. 
In the lower animals every external stimulus moves 
to some appropriate action. In Man it moves to 
some appropriate thought. This is an enormous 
difference ; but the principle is the same. We can 
see that, so far as the mechanism is visible, the 
plan or the principle of that mechanism is 
alike. The more clearly we understand that this 
organic mechanism has been a Growth and a 
Development, the more certain we may be that 
in its structure it is self-adapted, and that in 
its working it is true. And the same principle 



Pre-established Harmonies Certain. 



535 



applies to those other Faculties of our mental con- 
stitution which have no outward Orean to indicate 
the machinery through which their operations are 
conducted. In them the Spirit of Interpretation is 
in communication with the realities which lie behind 
phenomena — with energies which are kindred with 
its own. 

And so we come to understand that the processes 
of Development or of Creation, whatever they may 
have been, which culminated in the production of a 
Being such as Man, are processes wholly governed 
and directed by a Law of Adjustment between the 
higher Truths which it concerns him most to know, 
and the evolution of Faculties by which alone he 
could be enabled to apprehend them. There is no 
difficulty in conceiving these processes carried to 
the most perfect consummation, as we do see them 
actually carried to very high degrees of excellence 
in the case of a few men of extraordinary genius, or 
of extraordinary virtue. In science the most pro- 
found conclusions have been sometimes reached 
without any process of conscious reasoning. It is 
clearly the law of our nature, however, that the 
triumphs of Intellect are to be gained only by labo- 
rious thought, and by the gains of one generation 
being made the starting-point for the acquisition of 
the next. This is the general law. But it is a law 
which itself assumes certain primary Intuitions of 



536 



The Unity of Nature, 



the Mind as the starting-point of all. If these were 
wrong, nothing could be right. The whole pro- 
cesses of reasoning would be vitiated from the first. 
The first Man must have had these as perfectly as 
we now have them, else the earliest steps of Reason 
could never have been taken, and the earliest re- 
wards of discovery could never have been secured. 

But there is this great difference between the 
moral and intellectual nature of Man, that whereas 
in the work of Reasoning the perceptions which are 
primary and intuitive require to be worked out and 
elaborately applied, in Morals the perceptions which 
are primary are all in all. It is true that here also 
the applications may be infinite, and the doctrines of 
Utility have their legitimate application in enforcing, 
by the Sense of Obligation, whatever course of con- 
duct Reason may determine to be the most fitting 
and the best. The Sense of Obligation in itself is, 
like the sense of logical sequence, elementary, and, 
like it, is part and parcel of our mental constitution. 
But unlike the mere sense of logical sequence, the 
sense of moral Obligation has one necessary and 
primary application which from the earliest moment 
of Man's existence may well have been all-sufficient. 
Obedience to the will of legitimate Authority is, as 
we have seen in a former chapter, the first duty and 
the first idea of duty in the mind of every Child. If 
ever there was a Man who had no earthly Father, or 



Mans First Consciousness of God. 



537 



if ever there was a Man whose Father was, as com- 
pared with himself, a Beast, it would seem a natural 
and almost a necessary supposition that, along with 
his own new and wonderful power of self-conscious- 
ness, there should have been associated a conscious- 
ness also of the Presence and the Power of that 
Creative Energy to which his own Development was 
due. It is not possible for us to conceive what form 
the consciousness would take. " No man hath 
seen God at any time." This absolute declaration 
of one of the Apostles of the Christian Church 
proves that they accepted as metaphorical the literal 
terms in which the first communications between 
Man and his Creator are narrated in the Jewish 
Scriptures. It is not necessary to suppose that the 
Almighty was seen by His first human Creature 
walking in bodily form in a garden " in the cool of 
the day." The strong impressions of a spiritual 
Presence and of spiritual communications which 
have been the turning-point in the lives of men 
living in the bustle of a busy and corrupted world, 
may well have been even more vivid and more 
immediate when the first " Being worthy to be called 
a man " stood on this Earth alone. The light which 
shone on Paul of Tarsus on the way to Damascus 
may have been such a light as shone on the Father 
-of our race. Or the communication may have been 
what metaphysicians call purely subjective, such as 



538 



The Unity of Nature. 



in all ages of the world do sometimes ' 'flash upon 
that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude." But 
none the less may they have been direct and over- 
powering. The earliest and simplest conception of 
the Divine Nature might well also be the best. 
And although we are forbidden to suppose the 
embodiment and visibility of the Godhead, we are 
not driven to the alternative of concluding that 
there never could have been anything which is to 
us unusual in the intimations of His presence. 

Yet this is another of the unobserved assumptions 
which are perpetually made — the assumption of an 
Uniformity in Nature which does not exist. That 
" all things have continued as they are since the 
Beginning" is conceivable. But that all things 
should have continued as they were since before 
the Beginning is a contradiction in terms. In 
primeval times many things had then just been 
done of which we have no knowledge now. When 
the Form of Man had been fashioned and completed 
for the first time, like and yet unlike to the bodies 
of the Beasts ; when all their Organs had been lifted 
to a higher significance in his ; when his hands had 
been liberated from walking and from climbing, and 
had been elaborated into an instrument of the most 
subtle and various use ; when his feet had been 
adapted for holding him in the erect position ; when 
his breathing apparatus had been set to musical 



Man First Fashioned tinder Happy Conditions. 539 



chords of widest compass and the most exquisite 
tones ; when all his Senses had become ministers to 
a Mind endowed with Wonder and with Reverence, 
and with Reason and with Love — then a work had 
been accomplished such as the world had not known 
before, and such as has never been repeated since. 

All the conditions under which that work was 
carried forward must have been happy conditions — 
conditions, that is to say, in perfect harmony with 
its progress and its end. They must have been 
favourable, first, to the production, and then to the 
use, of those higher Faculties which separated the 
new Creature from the Beasts. They must have 
been in a corresponding degree adverse to and 
incompatible with the prevalence of conditions 
tending to reversion or to degradation in any form. 
That long and gradual ascent, if we assume it to 
have been so, — or, as it may have been, that sudden 
Transfiguration, — must have taken place in a con- 
genial air and amid surroundings which lent them- 
selves to so great a change. On every conceivable 
theory, therefore, of the origin of Man, all this seems 
a necessity of thought. But perhaps it seems on the 
Theory of Development even more a necessity than 
on any other. It is of the essence of that Theory that 
all things should have worked together for the good of 
the Being that was to be. On the lowest interpreta- 
tion, this "toil co-operant to an end" is always the 



540 



The Unity of Nature. 



necessary result of forces ever weaving and ever 
interwoven. On the higher interpretation it is 
the same. Only, some Worker is ever behind the 
work. But under either interpretation the conclu- 
sion is the same. That the first Man should have 
been a Savage, with instincts and dispositions per- 
verted as they are never perverted among the 
Beasts, is a supposition impossible and inconceiv- 
able. Like every other creature, he must have 
been in harmony with his origin and his end — with 
the path which had led him to where he stood, 
with the work which made him what he was. It 
may well have been part of that work — nay, it 
seems almost a necessary part of it — to give to this 
new and wonderful Being some knowledge of his 
Whence and Whither — some open vision, some 
Sense and Faculty Divine. 

With arguments so deeply founded on the Analo- 
gies of Nature in favour of the conclusion that the 
first Man, though a Child in acquired knowledge, 
must from the first have had instincts and intuitions 
in harmony with his origin and with his destiny, we 
must demand the clearest proof from those who 
assume that he could have had no conception of a 
Divine Being, and that this was an idea which could 
only be acquired in time from stariag at things too 
big for him to measure, and from wondering at 
things too distant for him to reach. Not even his 



Elements Born in Man for Apprehending God. 541 



powers could extract from such things that which 
they do not contain. But in his own Personality, 
fresh from the hand of Nature, — in his own Spirit 
just issuing from the fountains of its birth, — in his 
own Will, willing according to the Law of its Crea- 
tion, — in his own Desire of Knowledge, — in his own 
Sense of Obligation,- — in his own Wonder and Rever- 
ence and Awe, — he had all the elements to enable him 
at once to apprehend, though not to comprehend, 
the Infinite Being who was the Author of his own. 

It is, then, with that intense interest which must 
ever belong to new evidence in support of funda- 
mental Truths that we find these conclusions, founded 
as they are on the analogies of Nature, confirmed 
and not disparaged by such facts as can be gathered 
from other sources of information. Scholars who 
have begun their search into the origin of Religion 
in the full acceptance of what may be called the 
savage theory of the origin of Man, — who, capti- 
vated by a plausible generalisation, had taken it for 
granted that the farther we go back in time the 
more certainly do we find all Religion assuming one 
or other of the gross and idolatrous forms which 
have been indiscriminately grouped under the desig- 
nation of Fetishism — have been driven from this 
Belief by discovering to their surprise that facts do 
not support the theory. They have found, on the 
contrary, that up to the farthest limits which are 



54 2 The Unity of Nature. 

reached by records which are properly historical, and 
far beyond those limits to the remotest distance 
which is attained by evidence founded on the 
analysis of human Speech, the religious conceptions 
of men are seen, as we go back in time, to have been 
not coarser and coarser, but simpler, purer, higher 
■ — so that the very oldest conceptions of the Divine 
Being of which we have any certain evidence are 
the simplest and the best of all. 

In particular, and as a fact of typical significance, 
we find very clear indications that everywhere Idol- 
atry and Fetishism appear to have been corruptions, 
whilst the higher and more spiritual conceptions 
of Religion which lie behind, do generally even now 
survive among idolatrous tribes as vague surmises 
or as matters of speculative belief. Nowhere even 
now, it is confessed, is mere Fetishism the whole 
of the Religion of any people. Everywhere, in 
so far as the history of it is known, it has been the 
work of Evolution, — the development of tenden- 
cies which are deviations from older paths. And 
not less significant is the fact that everywhere in 
the imagination and traditions of Mankind there 
is preserved the memory and the belief in a Past 
better than the Present. " It is a constant saying," 
we are told, " among African tribes that formerly 
Heaven was nearer to Man than it is now ; that the 
highest God, the Creator Himself, gave formerly 



Dante s Claim for Instinct in Man. 543 



lessons of wisdom to human Beings ; but that 
afterwards He withdrew from them, and dwells 
now far from them in Heaven." All the Indian 
races have the same tradition ; and it is not easy to 
conceive how a Belief so universal could have arisen 
unless as a survival. It has all the marks of being 
a Memory and not an Imagination. It would re- 
concile the origin of Man with that Law which 
has been elsewhere universal in Creation — the Law 
under which every Creature has been produced not 
only with appropriate powers, but with appropriate 
Instincts and Intuitive Perceptions for the guidance 
of these powers in their exercise and use. Many 
will remember the splendid lines in which Dante 
has defined this Law, and has declared the impos- 
sibility of Man having been exempt therefrom :— 

Nell' ordine ch'io dico sono accline 

Tutte nature per diverse sorti 

Piu al principio loro, e men vicine ; 

Onde si muovono a diversi porti 

Per lo gran mar dell' essere ; e ciascuna 

Con istinto a lei dato che la porti. 

Ne pur le creature, che son fuore 
D'intelligenzia, quest'arco saetta, 
Ma quelle c ? hanno intelletto ed amore. * 

The only mystery which would remain is the mystery 
which arises out of the fact that somehow those 
Instincts have in Man not only been liable to fail, 

* " Paradiso," canto i. 110-120. 



544 



The Unity of Nature. 



but that they seem to have acquired apparently an 
ineradicable tendency to become perverted. But 
this is a lesser mystery than the mystery which would 
attach to the original birth or creation of any Creature 
in the condition of a human Savage. It is a lesser 
mystery because it is of the essence of a Being whose 
Will is comparatively free that he should be able to 
deviate from his appointed path. The Origin of 
Evil may appear to us to be a great mystery. But 
this at least may be said in mitigation of the difficulty, 
that without the possibility of Evil there could be no 
possibility of any Virtue. Among the lower animals 
Obedience has always been a necessity. In Man it 
was raised to the dignity of a duty. It is in this 
great change that we can see and understand how it 
is that the very elevation of his nature is insepar- 
able from the possibility of a Fall. The mystery, 
then, which attaches to his condition now is shifted 
from his endowments and his shifts to the use he made 
of them. The question of the origin of Religion is 
merged and lost in the question of the origin of Man. 
And that other question, how his Morals and how 
his Religion came to be corrupted, becomes intel- 
ligible on the supposition of wilful disobedience with 
all its tendencies and consequences having become 
" inherited and organised in the race." 

It is indeed most curious and instructive to observe 
that this formula of expression which has arisen in a 



Human Corruption Scientifically Defined. 545, 

School of Philosophy specially opposed to all theolo- 
gical conceptions, is one which seems as if it had been 
invented to give scientific form to that doctrine of 
the Christian Church which perhaps of all others it 
is most difficult to accept or understand. If it is the 
tendency of all action, whether for good or evil, to 
perpetuate itself, and to descend from one generation 
to another by hereditary transmission, then we have 
a strictly scientific explanation of the fact of inherited 
corruption in human nature, or as it is called in the 
language of Theology, of Original Sin. It may be 
that this doctrine has been taught with accretions 
which do not belong to it, and in forms which have 
rather concealed than revealed its truth. The very 
words "Original Sin" do not seem accurately to 
express a condition of things which is always ex- 
pressly represented as not original, but secondary and 
superinduced. But it is of the highest interest to 
observe that men looking into Nature with other 
views, and very different preconceptions, have seen 
a Law which really does, in some measure at least, 
explain the terrible reality of inherited corruption. 

Nor is it less remarkable that whilst this Law of 
action " inherited and organised in the race " does 
really cover and express the facts of our human 
nature as well as the Christian doctrine on the sub- 
ject, it is of no force or value whatever in the parti- 
cular argument in which it is commonly employed. 

2 M 



546 



The Unify of Nature. 



The Law or the theory of action (i inherited and 
organised " in races was conceived and laid down 
as a means of getting rid of and superseding the 
idea of original Instincts and Intuitions. But this it 
can never do, because, as we have seen, all animal 
Instincts are inseparably connected with Structure, 
and are invariably the expression and the index of 
some Organic Apparatus. Consequently, as every 
Organic Apparatus is a growth, and is essentially 
-innate, the corresponding impulses of Mind can only 
have the same origin, and must be innate precisely 
in the same sense, and in the same degree. The 
truth is that the law of Hereditary Transmission, like 
the law of Natural Selection, can account for the 
origin of nothing. Neither of these laws can have 
-any operation except upon things which have already 
begun to be. Whilst therefore the law of Hereditary 
Transmission — or as it is now called, the law of He- 
redity — can never account for the origin of Organic 
Instincts, it can, and it does in some degree, account 
for the perversion of these Instincts. It is not the 
use, but the abuse of Instincts which needs an expla- 
nation. When we seek to know the origin of any- 
thing, we assume and start from some anterior con- 
dition of things. But simple non-existence is the 
only condition of things which we can conceive as 
anterior to the first origin of every Organic Being. 
Its Organs cannot have been shaped by use ; because 



The Conclusions of our Analysis. 



547 



they must have been formed before they could be 
used. But when we come to seek an explanation 
of the origin of perverted Instincts, and of corrupted 
nature, we have an anterior condition of thing's which 
we not only may, but which we must, assume as a 
necessity of thought. That anterior condition is 
one in which every action of every living thing began 
and grew in perfect unison with its correspond- 
ing Organic Structure — not preceding that Struc- 
ture or causing it, but accompanying its growth, and 
resulting from it. Whilst therefore the law of Here- 
dity can never account for the origin of Instincts 
or Intuitions which are in harmony with the Order 
and the Reasonableness of Nature, it may well be 
accepted in a case where we have to account for 
tendencies and propensities which have no such 
character — which are exceptions to the Unity of 
Nature, and at variance with all that is intelligible 
in its Order, or reasonable in its Law. 

If all explanation essentially consists in the reduc- 
tion of phenomena into the terms of human thought 
and into the analogies of human experience, this is 
the explanation which can alone reconcile the un- 
questionable Corruption of Human Character with 
the Analogies of Creation. 

I must now bring these chapters to a close. If 
the conclusions to which they point are true, then 



548 



The Unity of Nature. 



we have in them some foundation-stones strong 
enough to bear the weight of an immense, and, 
indeed, of an immeasurable superstructure. If the 
Unity of Nature is not a unity which consists in 
mere sameness of material, or in mere identity of 
composition, or in mere uniformity of structure, but 
a unity which the Mind recognises as the result of 
operations similar to its own ; if Man, not in his 
Body only, but in the highest as well as in the 
lowest attributes of his Spirit, is inside this Unity 
and part of it ; if all his mental powers are, like the 
Instincts of the Beasts, founded on an Organic Har- 
mony between his Faculties and the realities of 
Creation ; if the limits of his knowledge do not 
affect its certainty ; if its accepted truthfulness in 
the lower fields of thought arises out of correspond- 
ences and adjustments which are applicable to all 
the energies of his Intellect, and all the aspirations 
of his Spirit; if the moral character- of Man, 
as it exists now, is the one great anomaly in 
Nature — the one great exception to its Order 
and to the perfect harmony of its laws ; if the 
corruption of this moral character stands in imme- 
diate and necessary connection with, and indeed 
essentially consists in, rebellion against the Autho- 
rity on which that Order rests ; if all igno- 
rance and error and misconception respecting the 
nature of that Authority and of its .commands 



Strong Foundations of Knowledge and Belief. 549 



has been and must be the cause of increasing devia- 
tion, disturbance, and perversion ; if it is a great 
natural law that every tendency of thought, and every 
habit of Mind, whether in a right or in a wrong 
direction, is prone to become inherited and organised 
in the race, — then, indeed, we have a view of things 
which is full of light. Dark as the difficulties which 
remain may be, they are not of a kind to undermine 
all certitude, or to discomfit all conviction. On the 
contrary, it is impressed upon us that the System 
under which we live, is not only a System accessible 
to our Intelligence, but so united to it that all the 
mysteries of the Universe, visible and invisible, are 
epitomised and enfolded in ourselves. And so we 
come to feel that our knowledge and our understand- 
ing of that System must " grow from more to more " 
in proportion as the whole of our own nature is laid 
open to the whole of its intimations, and the highest 
of our Faculties are kept in conscious and wakeful 
recognition of the Work and of the Power to which 
they stand related. Then also it will come to be 
plain to us that we may expect in that System, and 
that we may trust to it for, teaching of the highest kind, 
insomuch that Inspiration and Revelation are to be 
regarded not as incredible, or even as rare pheno- 
mena, but as operations which in various measures 
and degrees are altogether according to the natural 
constitution and course of things. For of this kind 



55o 



The Unity of Nature. 



essentially are all the wonderful Instincts of the lower 
animals and all the primary Intuitions of the human 
Mind. Of this kind especially are all those Gifts and 
Powers by which alone we can gain the very earliest 
lessons of Experience or mount the very first steps 
of Reason. And as these primary. Intuitions of 
the Mind give us our first entrance into some of 
the realities which lie behind phenomena, so, among 
these realities there is a still higher region into 
which our entrance may well be gained only by 
processes which are analogous. For, just as there 
are Truths related to the Reason which only the 
Intellect can appreciate, so there are others related 
to the Spirit which, in strict analogy, can only be 
spiritually discerned. And as, on the principle 
of the Unity of Nature, our Spiritual sense must be 
the Organic expression and result of a relation with 
real things, it is to be confidently expected that it 
can and will be fed with its appropriate food- — that 
it can and will be strengthened and enlightened by 
communications from a kindred Source. 

Let destructive criticism, then, do its work. But let 
that work be itself subjected to the same rigid analysis 
which it professes to employ. Under this analysis, 
unless I am much mistaken, the processes of the 
Negative Philosophy will be found defective. They 
systematically suppress more than one-half of the 
Facts of Nature ; and as systematically they silence 



Agnosticism ignores Faculties and Facts. 5 5 1 



more than one half of the Faculties of Man. More- 
over, the Faculties which they especially try to silence 
are the very highest Faculties of discernment which 
Nature gives to us. In the physical sciences we 
know what results would follow from such methods 
of treatment. Our work in the human Laboratory 
is poor and weak enough, and of a thousand sub- 
stances, having marvellous properties, we can give, 
after all is done, only a poor and beggarly account. 
But at least in these fields of research we do our 
very best. Nothing is thrown aside. Nothing is 
unobserved. Nothing is unrecorded. Every par- 
ticle is kept that it may tell its story. Nor is our 
care confined to the Atoms or to the Molecules which 
can be weighed or measured. For when the Visi- 
ble is transcended, we strain all the powers of Lan- 
guage to express the purely intellectual conceptions 
of Force and Energy, of Affinity and of Attraction, 
which are needed to help our understanding of the 
facts and of their dynamical interpretations. With 
all these helps, that understanding remains imper- 
fect. Yet in the far more difficult work of interpret- 
ing the vast System of Nature, with all its immea- 
surable wealth of Mind, the Agnostic philosophy 
deliberately sets aside everything that is kindred 
with the highest parts of our own moral and intel- 
lectual Structure. These are all absolutely excluded 
from the meanings and the sequences — from the- 



55 2 The Unity of Natun 



anticipations and the analogies of Creation. To 
those who have grasped the great Doctrine of the 
Unity of Nature, and have sounded the depth of 
its meaning and the sweep of its applications, this 
method of inquiry will appear self - condemned. 
That which pretends to be the universal solvent 
of all Knowledge and of all Belief, will be found 
to be destitute of any power to convict of falsehood 
the universal Instinct of Man, that by a careful and 
conscientious use of the appropriate means — by 
listening to the appropriate Voices — he can, and he 
does, attain — in the spiritual regions of the Invis- 
ible, as well as in the material regions of the 
Physical W orld — to a substantial knowledge of the 
Truth. 



INDEX. 



A 

Aberrant developments of Reason, 
445- 

Aborigines or Autocthonoi, the, 397. 

Acquisition of Knowledge, the, 342. 

Action of the Heart in Animals, in. 

Activity of Atoms, the, 218, 219. 

Adaptation of Sensation, the, 51. 

Adaptation, Purpose in, 201 ; a govern- 
ing principle in Nature, 282, 283. 

Adaptations of Function, the, 293. 

Adjustment, presupposed infinite unity 
of, 23, 24. 

Adjustments, in Physical Phenomena, 
31, 32 ; cycle of operations depending 
on, 43 ; resulting production of, 44 ; 
connected with Organic Life, 55-57 ; 
of Organs of Sense, 62, 63 ; between 
bodily Organs and Instincts, 78 ; 
unity of universal, 79 ; the element 
of, 116 ; a ground of faith, 121 ; our 
faculties a result and index of, 123, 
124 ; of Light and Sound to Sense, 
162 ; in relation to Life, 295 ; in Re- 
ligious Beliefs, 502, 503 ; authority of 
Structural, 531-535- 

Affections and Appetites, the, 449. 

Affinities in Instinct to Mind, 107. 

Affinities of Sense-impressions, 65. 

Affinity, Chemical, rapidity of action of, 
141 ; of Atoms, 218-221, 251. 

African Continent, Man on the, 413. 

African Negroes, Religion of, 485. 

Agassiz' objection to Development 
theory, 290, 291. 

Age of idea of Unity of Nature, 2, 3. 

Agnostic Philosophy, foundation of the, 
128. 

Agnostic, the doubt of the, 126, 127. 



Agnosticism, morbid nature of, 122 ; 

fundamental inconsistency in, 279. 
Aim of Man's Life, the, 348. 
Albumen, the "Differentiation" of, 38. 
Alkaline Metals, 246. 
Ambiguity of the word Supernatural, 

274. 

American Civilisation, ancient, 430-435. 
American Merganser, the, 102. 
Amoeba, constituent elements of the, 

49 ; a Microscopic Organism, 259. 
Analogies prevailing in the Circle of 

Forces, 20. 
Analysis of Mind and Matter, 328. 
Anas Boschtis, the, 85. 
Anatidce, young of the, 99. 
Anatomist, the work of the, 6. 
Anatomy of Whales, the, 266. 
Ancient and Modern Atomism, 208, 

209. 

Aniline Dyes, 246. 

Animal Automatism, 80, 95, 122, 299, 
490. 

Animal Instinct, 66-88 ; in relation to 
Man, 81 ; not self-developed, 91 ; 
congenital and innate, 93 ; affinities 
of, to Mind, 107; origin of, 118; 
definition of, 120. 

Animal Life, special function of, 43. 

Animal Organisms, the Tissues of, 255. 

Animals, impulse and power in, 317, 
318. 

Animal Worship, origin of, 488-495. 
Anomaly in Human Development, 362- 

367 ; in nest of Gall-fly, 71-73. 
Antarctic Circle, configuration of the, 

401. 

Antecedence, uniform or necessary, 138. 
Anthropomorphism, an exaggerated 
form of, 118 ; literal meaning of, 167 ; 



554 



Index. 



central idea of objections to, 16S ; a 
spurious kind of, 202, 203 ; identifi- 
cation with the Supernatural, 277 ; 
objectionable form of, 282 ; physical 
conceptions in, 297 ; conception of 
Matter founded on, 306. 
Anthropopsychism, or Alan - Soulism, 
168 ; false assumptions underlying, 
171, 172, 192 ; demand upon in sys- 
tem of Nature, 224 ; Creation and 
Evolution complementary to, 272 ; 
exclusion of, in Nature, 274 ; pro- 
positions involved in denial of, 277, 
278 ; refutation of, 278, 279; true 
and legitimate, 282 ; characteristic 
of Air. Darwin's language, 287, 288, 
305 ; of Professor Tyndall's, 289 ; 
relative to interpretations of Nature, 

294, 295 ; applied to Arnold's con- 
ception of a Divine Being, 296 ; rela- 
tive to Physical Conceptions, 298 ; 
relative to Mental Conceptions, 307, 
308, 314; a sublime kind of, 511. 

Anthropos, the, of the Greeks, 308. 
Antiquity of Land;masses, 403. 
Aphorism, an ancient, 281, 289. 
Apparatuses in Nature, the, 205. 
Appetite in Alan and Animals, 360, 367. 
Appetite, true explanation of, 448. 
Arctic Circle, configuration of the, 401. 
Arnold, Matthew, on the Divine Being, 

295, 296. 
Arrowhead, a flint, 178. 

Artificial Acquirements 0/ the Dog, 91. 

Artificial and Abstract Definitions, sig- 
nificance of, 34. 

Art surpassed by Instinct, 85. 

Aryans, Religious Conceptions of, 515- 
518. 

Aryans, Religious Thought among the, 
2. 

Aspects of Relation between Alan and 
Nature, 174. 

Assimilation of Food, the, 51. 

Association of Ideas, the, 324. 

Assumptions regarding origin of Re- 
ligion, 525-530. 

Atmosphere, composition of the, 229, 
230. 



Atom, early ideas regarding the, 208, 
209 ; the unit of chemical combina- 
tion, 212, 213 ; of modern Science, 
214-216; "Valency" of the, 218- 
220 ; chemical affinity in the, 221 ; 
combination or "interlocking" of 
the, 251-253. 

Attiwenderonks, Indian tribe of the, 
435- 

Authority, the Supreme, 353-361. 
Australasia, Fauna and Flora of, 414- 
416. 

Australian Tribes, Religion of, 457. 

Automatic Alovements, physical, 197. 

Automatism, Animal, 80 ; scrutiny of 
the proposition, 95 ; comforting na- 
ture of the conception, 122 ; as Reflex 
Action, 299 ; with reference to origin 
of Religion, 490. 

Autocthonci or Aborigines, 397. 

Axiom of Intelligibility of Nature, 199, 
200, 202-206. 



B 



Baffin's Bay, Alan on the Shores of, 
407. 

Bakerian Lecture on Light, the, 13. 

Baleen of Whales, the, 264. 

Balfour Stewart, Professor, on Light 

and Heat, 28 ; on " Conservation of 

Energy," 146. 
Barbarism and Savagery, signification 

of the terms, 384-386 ; not primeval, 

387-389. 
Basis of Life, the Physical, 35. 
Basis of Knowledge, Experience the, 

143, 144, 149. 
Basis of Reasoning, the, 120. 
Bates' "Naturalist on the Amazon,' 

427. 

Bay of Chaleur, the, 183. 
Beagle, the, at Tierra del Fuego, 405, 
406. 

Beaver Art, a work of, 183-186. 
Bees, intuitive instinct of, 78. 
Behring's Straits, configuration of, 40Z. 
Belfast Address, Professor Tyndall's, 
276, 277, 289. 



Index. 



555 



Belief, Systems of, 453, 467. 
Belief in the existence of God, 455, 456, 
527-529- 

Berkeley, Bishop, proposition of, 60. 

Biology, interest attaching to, 262. 

Birds, deceptions by, 85, 101-103. 

Birds, intuitive perceptions of, 68. 

Birth of Germs, the, 269. 

Blood-corpuscles, protoplasmic, 50. 

Blood, corpuscles of the, 257 ; circula- 
tion of the, 259, 260 ; differentiation 
of the, 298, 299. 

Bodily Organs and Instincts, adjust- 
ments between, 78. 

Bone, the formation of, 40, 41. 

Bony structure of Animal Bodies, 260. 

"Book of the Dead," the, 518, 519. 

Brahminism, the beliefs of, 505-509 ; 
central idea of, 517. 

Brain-Structure, Mind pre-supposed in, 
203, 204. 

Brodie, Sir B., on "Ideal Chemistry," 
219. 

Buddhism, 505-509. 

"Building up " of Organic compounds, 

247-249. 
Bushmen of Africa, the, 413. 
Butler, Bishop, " On the Ignorance of 

Man," 165. 

C 

Calcium or lime in bone, 40. 

Caloric, definitions of, 28-30. 

Cannibalism and Infanticide not pri- 
meval, 387. 

Carbon, the Atom of, 218. 

Carbon, transmutation of, 16. 

Cartesians, the view of Orthodox, 107. 

Cartier's exploration of the St. Law- 
rence, 433, 434. 

Cartilage and Bone, 40, 41. 

Caterpillar, Cocoon of the, 72. 

Causation, the concept of, 138, 142. 

Cell-growth in Plants, 285. 

"Cell," the living, 245; the unit* of 
Organic Structure, 255. 

Central conception of Derivative Hypo- 
thesis, 283. 



Central idea of Brahminism, 517. 
Central idea of Mr. Darwin's system, 
287. 

Central question of Ethical Inquiry, 
339- 

Central Unities of Nature, recognition 

of the, 79. 
Centifrugal Force, 197. 
Changes in Species, 266, 267. 
Channel of Mental Communication, the, 

62. 

Characteristics of Civilisation, 382-384. 
Character, Moral, in Man, 316. 
Character of Man, degradation of, 374- 
377. 

Character of Sensation, fundamental, 61. 

Chemical Affinities, combinations ef- 
fected by, 56, 57. 

Chemical Affinity, power of Ether on, 
15 ; mysterious nature of, 19 ; forces 
originating unknown, 31 ; rapidity of 
action of, 141 ; in Atoms, 220, 221 ; 
in Marine Life, 235 ; in Metallic 
Operations, 238, 239, 241 ; in Or- 
ganic and Inorganic, 242-254. 

Chemical combination, laws of, 252, 253. 

Chemical combinations of Atoms, 219- 

221. 

Chemical effects of Light, 31. 
Chemical Force, resources of, 222-224 ; 

as an instrument of Purpose, 225. 
Chemical relationship of Animals and 

Plants to Man, 47. 
Chemistry of the Blood, 258. 
Chemistry of the Metals, 235-239. 
Chemist, work of the, 6. 
Chick of Birds, the embryo, 71. 
Cinclus aqtiaticus, the, 81. 
Circulating Fluids of the Body, action of 

the, 51. 

Circulation of the Blood, the, 259. 
" Circumnutation " in Plant-life, 284- 
286. 

Civilisation, ancient American, 430- 435. 

Civilisation, meaning of, 381-384 ; ori- 
gin of, 394. 

" Classification * of Insects," West- 
wood's, 77. 

Classifying Instinct in Man, the, 24. 



556 



Index. 



Clerk Maxwell, Professor, on the 

Chemistry of the Atom, 215, 257. 
Cocoon of the Caterpillar, 72. 
Cohantis, belief of the, 485. 
Coincidence of early and modern ideas 

of Atoms, 208, 209. 
Colonisation, motives for, 421. 
Colours of the Solar Spectrum, 21, 22. 
Combinations affected by Chemical 

Affinities, 56, 57, 252, 253. 
Combinations of Oxygen, chemical, 

225, 226 ; of inorganic substances, 

227-229. 

Community of structure of Man and 

Animals, 53, 54. 
Comparative Anatomist, work of the, 7. 
Comparative Anatomy, a doctrine of, 

263, 264. 

Complex physical machinery, a, 258, 
259- 

Composition and properties of Walter, 

230, 231. 
Composition of Man's Body, 46. 
Composition of Solar Light, 21, 22. 
Comprehensive truth, a, 281. 
Comte's religious belief, 460, 483, 495, 

496. 

Concentrations of Force, 137, 138. 
Conception of Evolution, a perfect, 351. 
Conception of Living Agencies, the, 
472-477. 

Conceptions of Space and Time, the, 

!33, i34, 138, 142. 
Conceptions of the Divine Being, 513- 

5i9. 

Conceptions of Science, fundamental, 

142-145. 
Conditions essential to Life, 256. 
Conduct and the Moral Sense, 323-325, 

354- 355- 

Configuration of the Globe, the, 399- 
402. 

Congenital Instincts, 93, 94. 
Connection between Life and bodily 

mechanism, 109. 
Connection between Physical Forces, 17. 
Connection of Mind and Matter, 306, 

307. 

Conscience or Moral Sense, 329. 



Consciousness, an accompaniment and 

result of Life, 57. 
Consciousness of God, Man's, 537. 
Conscious sensation dependent on 

structure, 111. 
Conservation of Energy, 28, 137. 
Constituents of the Human Body, 46. 
Constitution of Matter, conceptions 

regarding, 207-209. 
Constitution of the Sun, physical, 309. 
Continuity, the Law of, 140-142. 
Contradictory aspects of Mind to 

Matter, 195. 
Constructive agencies in Nature, 39, 40, 

205. 

Co-ordination and adjustment in the 

facts of Life, 56. 
Copper, 237, 238. 
Corpuscles of Blood, the, 257. 
Correlation of laws of growth with 

utility, 283. 
Correlation of Forces, the, 139, 140. 
Correlation of Natural Forces, 287. 
Correspondence of Man and Anirnals, 

physical, 112, 117. 
Corresponding Instincts and Bodily 

Organs, 78. 
Cosmogony, an ancient, 397. 
Counterfeiting helplessness, birds, 85, 

101, 103. 
Courage and Patriotism, 383. 
Course of Development in Man, 365- 

367. 

" Crag," the Gravels of the, 180. 

Creation, harmony in economy of, 380. 

"Creation by Law," theories and con- 
ceptions of, 53. 

Creation, processes of, 270-273. 

Creative power, Mr. Darwin on, 277. 

Crude conceptions of old Materialism, 
211. 

Cruelty arising from good motives, 337, 
338. 

Crystallisation and Organisation, 261. 
Crystallisation, the processes of, 39, 40. 
Crystals, structure of, 250. 
Cuckoo, special instincts of the, 318. 
Current of the Blood, the, 260. 
Customs, Savage, 486, 487. 



Index. 



557 



Cyanogen compounds, 246. 
Cycle of Forces, the great, 18. 
Cycle of Organic Development, 271. 
Cynips Kolleri, the, 70. 

D 

Dahomey, religious customs of, 487, 
488. 

Dam, the Beaver's, 185, 186. 

Danger of inadequate conceptions of 
Unity, 7. 

Dante on Instinct in Man, 543. 

Darwin, Mr., weak point in his theory 
of Development, 267 ; on Creative 
Power, 277 ; on the principles of 
Adaptation, 283 ; on the " Move- 
ments of Plants," 284-286 ; central 
idea of his system, 287; anthropo- 
psychic language of, 287, 288, 305 ; 
on Origin of Man, 399 ; on the natives 
of Tierra del Fuego, 405-408. 

"Data of Ethics," Spencer's, 347, 351. 

Dawson's "Fossil Men," 433, 434. 

Dean of Chester, the, on "Form," 167, 
168. 

De Brosses on the term Fetish, 484. 
Deceptions by Birds, 85, 101-103. 
Deceptive aspect of the relation of 

Cause and Effect, 172. 
Declension of Mahommedanism, the, 

501-504. 

Decline of Civilisation among Indians, 
43i, 432. 

Definition of Instinct or Intuition, 120. 
Definition of Knowledge, a, 4. 
Definition of Life, the, 54 ; Herbert 

Spencer's, 294, 295. 
Definition of Light and Heat, 25, 26. 
Definition of Organic Chemistry, 245. 
Definition of Religion, Schleiermacher's, 

453 ; Tiele's, 454. 
Degenerate Developments of Religion, 

481. 

Degradation — of females among Sav- 
ages, 369, 370 ; of character and con- 
dition in Man, 374-377, 395, 396 ; a 
result of adverse conditions, 425-430 ; 
due to internecine strife, 431-435 ,* 



due to internal causes, 437 ; con- 
tinuity of, 479, 482 ; in Religion, 487, 
500 ; in animal worship, 493. 

Deifications of Nature, Vedic, 515. 

Deity, Man's relations to the, 311-314. 

Delegation of Natural Powers, the, 187, 
188. 

Delusion in regard to Inwardness, 195. 

Denial of a God, the, 458, 459. 

Dependence, the, of Man, 356. 

Derivation of Man's first beliefs, 3. 

Derivative Hypothesis, the, applied to 
Organic Life, 282 ; its central con- 
ception, 283. 

Descartes and the word "Idea," 60; 
doctrine of, 107-109. 

Desire of knowledge, 319-322. 

Development, of Seeds and Eggs, 41 ; 
Structural, 262, 263 ; process of, in 
Insects, 265 ; weak point in Darwin's 
theory of, 267 ; of Germs, 271 ; cen- 
tral conception of, 283, 287 ; founded 
on Teleology, 289 ; Agassiz' objection 
to theory of, 290, 291 ; a familiar fact 
of Creation, 362 ; seeming anomaly 
in Human, 363-365 ; in the germs 
of good and evil, 390, 391 ; Time 
an element of, 392-394 ; connection 
of Origin of Man with, 417 ; in a 
wrong direction, 431-437 ; in the ad- 
vances of Reason, 439, 440 ; retro- 
grade steps in Moral, 441-445 ; in the 
law of Natural Adjustment, 531-535 ; 
a necessary condition of, 539. 

Difference between Man and Animals, 
129, 130 ; between Religion and Su- 
perstition, 481. 

Difference in Living Organisms, 254. 

Difference, Knowledge a perception 
of, 4. 

"Differentiated " Organisms, 37, 38, 41, 
298. 

Difficulties in the belief of the Super- 
natural, 275. 

Digestion, chemical processes of, 51. 

Dipper, the, or Water- ousel, 81 ; curi- 
ous anecdote of a young, 82, 83, 89, 
98. 

Disease, the Phenomena of, 50. 



558 



Index. 



Dispositions, perverted, in Man, 367- 
373- 

Dissipation of Energy, the, 137. 
Distinction between Man and Nature, 
172-176. 

Distinction between Relative and " Un- 
conditioned," 154, 155. 

Distinctions between Light and Heat, 
25-3°. 

Distinctions existing in Nature, 55. 

Distortion of Vegetable Vitality, an un- 
natural, 74, 75. 

Distribution of Human Race, 396-426. 

Diversity of relations, infinite, 5, 6. 

Dividing-line of Mind and Matter, 175. 

Divine Being, conceptions of the, 513- 
5i9. 

Divine Being, the, of Matthew Arnold, 
295, 296. 

Divorce of Religion and Worship, 456, 
457. 

Dixey, F. A., on Ossification, 41. 
Doctrine of Comparative Anatomy, 263, 
264. 

Doctrine of "Homologies," the, 52. 

Doctrine of Original Sin, the, 544, 545. 

Doctrine of Transmigration of Souls, 
the, 506, 507. 

Dog, acquirements of the, 91 ; decep- 
tion of the, by - birds, 102-104. 

Domestic Animals in Tropical America, 
427. 

Dormouse, Nest of the, 72. 
Double Personality, a, in Man, 119. 
Doubt of the Agnostic, the, 126, 127. 
Downwardness and Upwardness in 

Space, 193. 
Duality of mental operations, 118, 119. 
Dun-diver, the, 83. 
" Dyaus," the appellative, 514. 

E 

EAR, the, and Sound-vibrations, 63. 
Earth-formation, the processes of, 177, 
178. 

Effects of Light, chemical, 31. 

Egg, Development from the, 268, 298. 

Eggs and Seeds, Development of, 41. 



Egypt, the Religion of, 488, 492, 518, 
519. 

Egyptian Polytheism, 3. 

Electricity, identification of, with 

Chemical Force, 18. 
Electricity, connection of Ether with, 15. 
Elementary character of Moral Sense, 

323, 326, 327. 
Elementary substances in Atmosphere 

and Soil, 46 ; combinations of, 227- 

229, 236. , 
Element of adjustment, the, 116. 
Elements of metaphor, the, 79. 
Elimination of the Supernatural, Tyn- 

dall's, 277. 
Emotions of Animals, Malebranche on 

the, 107, 108. 
Energies of Nature, Personality in, 469. 
Energy of vegetable growth, 70. 
Energy, the Conservation of, 137 ; Mr. 

Balfour Stewart on, 146. 
Errors in generalisations of science, 

7, 8. 

Eskimo or Inuit race, the, 405, 409- 
412, 420. 

Essence of Life and Death, the, 56. 

Ether, fact of an universal, 11 ; its 
nature, 13 ; _ the Element of other 
Forces, 15, 19 ; vibrations in, 29. 

Ethical Inquiry, central question of, 
339- 

Ethical Philosophy, the two Schools of, 
314. 

Ethical Sentiment, Grote on, 326. 
Etymology, Theories of Scientific, 521. 
Example, the influence of, 477. 
Exceptional Development in Man, 365- 
367. 

Exception to ordinary laws, an, 72, 73. 
Exhibitions of Animal Instinct, 83-88. 
Existence of God, belief in, 455, 456, 
527-529. 

Experience, the Origin of, 94; the 

Basis of Knowledge, 143, 144, 149. 
Explanation of Moral Anomalies, 377. 
Explosive Forces, principle of, 136. 
Extravagances of Buddhism, 506, 507. 
Exudations of Vegetable Organisms, 69. 
Evil and good, the germs of, 390, 391. 



Index. 



559 



Evils of the Savage state, 369, 370. 

Evolution, the accepted idea of, 92 ; 
Physical Organism in, 262-271 ; Man 
a product of, 279 ; Agassiz' objeotion 
to theory of, 290, 291 ; a perfect con- 
ception of, 351 ; relative to good and 
evil, 590, 391 ; the evidence of Pale- 
ontology regarding, 428, 429 ; result 
of the process of, in Man, 436 ; 
Fetishism a work of, 542. 

Eye, the retina of the, 62. 

F 

Fact of an universal Ether, 11 ; its 

nature, 13. 
Factors, unseen, in System of Nature, 

38, 39. 4i. 
Facts of Organic Life, fundamental, 
48, 49 ; co-ordination and adjustment 
in, 56. 

Faculties, Mental, 329-331. 
Faculty of Imitation, the, 93. 
Fallacy in use of word " Utility," 347- 
349, 35 2 - 

False conclusion from reflex Nerve- 
action, 109, 110. 

" Familiar Lectures on Scientific Sub- 
jects," Herschel's, 14. 

Fauna and Flora of Australasia, 414- 
416. 

Fear of punishment, the, 358. 
Female degradation among Savages, 
369. 370. 

Fetishism, Max M tiller on, 483 ; 
Comte's, 496; a corruption of Re- 
ligion, 541, 542. 

Finite and the Infinite, the, 133. 

First beliefs, Man's, 3. 

First consciousness of God, Man's, 
537-541. 

First inventions of Man, 521, 522. 
Fitzroy, Captain, and the Fuegians, 
406. 

Flower, Professor, on the Origin of 

Whales, 264. 
Food, the Assimilation of, 51. 
Force and Matter cognisable as Infinite, 

134. 135. 



Force, Mechanical, or Machines, 95-97. 
Force, the Order of Nature dependent 
on, 137. 

Forces of Nature, Man's relationship 

with the, 55. 
Forces, the correlation of, 139, 140. 
"Form," the Dean of Chester on the 

word, 167, 168. 
Foresights of Nature, the, 193. 
Formation of bone, the, 40, 41. 
Formative energies of Development, 42. 
Forms of Motion, Light and Heat as, 

25. 

"Fossil Men," Dawson's, 433, 434. 

Fossil teeth of Sharks, 180. 

Foster's "Text-Book of Physiology," 

110, 258, 302, 303. 
Foundation of the Agnostic Philosophy, 

128. 

Foundations of Reason, Physical, 123. 
Four Stages of Religion, Comte's, 483. 
"Fragments on Ethical Subjects," 

Grote's, 326. 
Freedom of the Will, the, 123, 124, 446. 
Fulness of Life in the Sea, 232, 233. 
Functional adaptations, 293. 
Function and Structure, unity of, 191. 
Functions and Powers of Atoms, 216, 

217. 

Functions of Organic Structure, 256. 
Fundamental Belief of all Religions, 
467. 

Fundamental conceptions of Science, 

142, 143-145. 
Fundamental elements in Organic Life, 

48-50. 

Fundamental inconsistency in Agnos- 
ticism, 279. 

G 

Gall-flies, the common, 68-75. 
Galvanism, connection of Ether with, 
15. 

Gamgee's " Physiological Chemistry," 
258. 

Geology, the teaching of, 403; in 

reference to Creation, 428. 
Generalisation a work of Selection, 7. 
General truths, recognitions of, 145. 



560 



Index. 



"Genesis of Species," Mivart's, 292. 
Germs, the Development of, 42, 269, 

271 ; potentiality in, 263. 
Giraffe, palate of the, 264. 
Globe, configuration of the, 399-402. 
God, Man's relations to, 311-314. 
Godhead, true idea of the, 511. 
Golden Rule, the, and Utilitarianism, 

344. 355- 
Gold, native purity of, 236, 237. 
Good and Evil, the germs of, 390, 391. 
" Governor," the, in the Steam-engine, 

196. 

Gravels, the composition of, 177, 178. 

Gravitation, universality of, 9, 10 ; all- 
pervading force of, 135 ; the mystery 
of, 210, 211. 

Great Being, Comte's, 496-498. 

Greek Anthropos, the, 308. 

Greek Kosmos, the, 1. 

Grote's " Fragments on Ethical Sub- 
jects," 326. 

Grove, Sir W., on Light and Heat, 26 ; 
on Correlation of Forces, 139 ; on 
" Nature abhors a vacuum," 281. 

Growth of Knowledge, the, 316, 317. 

Grub of the Gall-fly, 71. 

Gulf between living and non-living, 55. 

H 

Habitat of the Dipper, 81. 
Hamilton, SirW., 153-155. 
Harmonies in Nature, pre-established, 
90, 94- 

Harmonies of the Spectrum, 23. 
Harmony in economy of Creation, 380. 
Hearing and Sight, the language of 

Sensation, 51. 
Heat and Light, distinctions between, 

25, 28-30. 

Heat, definition of, 27, 28 ; separable 
from Light, 33 ; Motion the cause of, 
139 ; Light the cause of, 140 ; reflex 
action in, 300. 

••Heaven-Father," the, 509, 511, 515. 

Heavens, mechanism of the, 9. 

Helplessness, birds counterfeiting, 85, 
100-103. 



Helplessness of Man, the, 356, 359. 
Hereditary Transmission, law of, 546, 
547. 

Heroes of Humanity, the, 499. 
Herschel, Sir John, on Light, 14 ; on 

the Atom, 215, 257. 
'• Hibbert Lectures," Max Miiller's, 457, 

463, 483, 485> 5°9> 52i, 5 2 4 : Renouf s, 

3. 519- 

Higher unities obscured in Physical, 
3i-33- 

Hill Tribes of India, the, 427. 
" Hinduism," Monier Williams on, 517, 
521. 

"History of Materialism," Lange's, 
199, 203. 

Hochelaga, the Indians of, 434. 

House of Life, primary agent in build- 
ing the, 50. 

Homologies, Physical, between Man 
and Animals, 279, 280. 

' ' Homologies, " the Doctrine of, 52. 

Hottentots of Africa, the, 413. 

How, What, and Why, the, 163. 

Human Art easily discerned, 179. 

Human Development, moral sense in, 
341 ; anomaly in, 362-367. 

Human Immigration, 407-426. 

Human inquiry, the great subjects of, 
163. 

Humanity, Comte's Worship of, 460, 

483. 495-5oo. 
Human Knowledge, limits of, 126, 127. 
Human Mechanism, principle of, 532- 

534- 

Human Mind, the only type of the 

Supernatural, 274. 
Human perversions, 367-373. 
Human Race, distribution of the, 396- 

426. 

Hunger and Taste, universal sensations 

of Animal Organisms, 65. 
Hunger and Thirst, the origin of, 448. 
Huxley, Professor, and the " Physical 

Basis of Life," 35 ; on the Phenomena 

of Vivisection, 109; his "Science 

Primers," 261. 
"Hydro-Carbons," chemistry of the, 

245- 



Index. 



561 



Hydrogen, the Atom of, 215. 
Hypothesis of Molecular constitution, 
212, 213. 

Hypothesis of various Origins of Man, 
393- 

I 

1 ' Idea, " meaning attached to the word, 
60, 61. 

"Ideal Chemistry," Sir B. Brodie's, 
219. 

Idealism, the extreme doctrine of, 60. 

Idealistic Philosophy, error in the, 150. 

Ideas, association of, 324. 

Identification of Man with the Super- 
natural, 276. 

Identity and uniformity of Atoms, 215. 

" Identity of Light and Heat," Pro- 
fessor Tyndall on the, 25. 

Identity of Origin and Function in Man 
and Animals, 280. 

Ignorance, Man's Sense of, 319-322, 
336. 

Imagination, the Origin of, 470. 
Imitation, the Faculty of, 93. 
Immigration, Human, 407-426. 
" Impenetrability " of Matter, 252. 
Impressions and conceptions of Instinct, 
120. 

Improbability of Agnostic Philosophy, 
280. 

Impulse and Movement "incommen- 
surate," 302, 303. 

Impulse and Power, 317, 318. 

Inadequate conceptions of Unity, dan- 
ger of, 7. 

Incapacity or Restraint, 131, 132. 

Incomprehensible reality, Matter an, 
154. 155- 

Inconceivability of a First Man, 523- 
525- 

Inconsistency in Agnosticism, funda- 
mental, 279. 

Indestructibility of Matter, the, 135- 
137, 142, 143. 

Indians of North America, 430-433. 

Inexplicable natural operation, an, 74, 
75- 



" Infinite," conception of the, 461-464, 

466, 510, 514, 527. 
Infinite, the, a conception of Science, 

143- 

Infinite Unity of Adjustment presup- 
posed, 23, 24. 

" Innate ideas" in Nature, 90. 

Innate sense of Unity in Nature, Man's, 
8. 

Inorganic combinations, 227-229. 
Inorganic, Chemistry of the, 245, 246. 
Inorganic Kingdom, common elements 
in, 47. 

Inorganic, sphere of the, 251. 
Inorganic structure, 250. 
Inorganic structures merely chemical, 
253. 

Inorganic World, the, pre-adapted to 

Organic, 235. 
Inquiry into Origin of Religion, 450- 

5*9- 

Insect Life in the Riviera, 86. 
Insects, the Metamorphoses of, 264, 
265, 271. 

Insidedness and Outsidedness, 193. 
Inspiration of Faith, Instinct an, 100, 
101. 

Instinctive or Intuitional Perceptions, 
147. 

Instinct, its Unity with Nature, 67, 68 ; 
of the Gall-fly, 77 ; in relation to 
Man, 81 ; of the young Dipper, 83 ; 
of the Wild Duck, 85 ; of a Moth in 
the Riviera, 87, 88 ; not Self-deve- 
loped, 90 ; always Congenital and 
Innate, 92, 93 ; an Inspiration of 
Faith, 100, 101 ; Reasoning implicit 
in, 105 ; Affinities in, to Mind, 107 ; 
Man cognisant of, 117 ; Origin of, 
118 ; Definition of, 120 ; the result of 
unseen laws, 123 ; of the Savage, 147 ; 
of the Cuckoo, 318 ; as a substitute 
for Reason in Lower Animals, 364. 

Intellect a Product of Nature, 288. 

Intelligence and Will, Definition of, 
189. 

Intelligence, Animal, 66-68. 
Intelligence, the Growth of, 316. 
Intelligent Perception, range of, 59. 

2 N 



562 



Index. 



Intelligibility of Nature, axiom of the, 

199, 200, 202-206. 
Intuition, Animal, 66-68 ; or Instinct, 

Definition of, 120. 
Intuitive Knowledge, 147-149. 
Inutility and Utility, 347. 
"Invisible," Conception of the, 464, 

510, 514, 527. 
Iron and its Combinations, 237, 238. 
Iroquois and Mohawks, the, 433, 435. 

K 

KANT on Intuitive Knowledge, 149. 

Knowledge, a Definition of, 4 ; consists 
in the Perception of Relations, 153 ; 
in what it consists, 163 ; the Acquisi- 
tion of, 342. 

Knowledge and Reason, 169, 170. 

Knowledge identified with Religion, 
460, 471. 

Knowledge of Matter, our, 154, 155. 
Knowledge of the Related and the 

Real, 165. 
Knowledge, Relative, 152. 
Kosmos, the, of the Greeks, 1. 

L 

Laboratory, Triumphs of the, 248. 
Lakes Erie and Huron, Tribes of, 435. 
Land Masses older than Man, 403. 
Lange's "History of Materialism," 199, 
203. 

Language and Thought, 108. 
Language, Distinctions recognised in, 

173, 174- 
Language of Sensation, the, 51. 
Language, Value of Metaphorical, 293. 
Law of Continuity, the, 140-142. 
Law of Heredity, 546, 547. 
Law of Population, Tendency of, 423. 
Laws and Constitution of Light, 13, 14. 
Laws and Forces of Chemical Affinity, 

57- 

Laws of Chemical Affinity, 253. 

Laws of Growth, Correlation of, with 

Utility, 283. 
Laws of Thought Laws of Nature, 151. 



"Lectures," Sir W. Hamilton's, 153- 

Lesson of the Gall-fly's nest, the, 73. 

Lewes, Mr. G. H. , on Life, 36. 

Life, not mere Protoplasm, 34, 35 ; the 
Phenomena of, 36, 37 ; the Ultimate 
Nature of, 48, 54 ; Spencer's Defini- 
tion of, 294, 295 ; the Antecedent of 
Organism, 307. 

Life in the Ocean, Fulness of, 232, 233. 

Light and Heat, Distinction between, 
25 ; Definition of, 25, 26 ; Relations 
between, 27-30 ; Chemical Effects of, 

Light and Sound, Progressive Know- 
ledge of, 158, 159, 161, 162. 

Light, its Measure and Operation, 10 ; 
Velocity of, 11, 12, 14; its Nature, 
13, 14, 23 ; its Connection with Heat, 
with Galvanism and Electricity, 15; 
Composition of Solar, 21, 22 ; separ- 
able from Heat, 33 ; the Cause of 
Heat, 140 ; Reflex Action in, 300. 

Lime or Calcium in bone, 40. 

Limitation of the word Nature, a, 274. 

Limitations affecting our Knowledge, 
156. 

Limitations of Mind and Spirit, 129- 
i3 2 - . 

Limitations of our Faculties, the, 121. 
Limits of Human Knowledge, the, 126, 
127. 

Lines of Variation pre-determined, 267. 
Living Agencies in Nature, 472-477. 
Living and Non-living, Gulf between 
the, 55. 

Living Bodies, Unity of Mechanism of, 
58. 

Living Creatures, Personality among, 

188, 190. 
Living Machines, Animals as, 97. 
Living Organism, Difference in, 254. 
" Living " Protoplasm, 35. 
Localisation of Sensation, 51. 
Local truth, a, 193. 
Locke, and the word " Idea," 60. 
Logical Faculty, operations of the, 

169. 

Lowest Races, Weakness of the, 429, 430. 



Index. 



563 



Lubbock, Sir J., on Insect Develop- 
ment, 265; his "Prehistoric Times," 
43°, 43 1. 

Lucretian Philosophy, Crudity of, 212. 
Lucretius, Hatred of Religion by, 527, 
528. 

Luminiferous Ether, Ubiquity of, 30. 
M 

Machines, Animals as, 95-98; the 

term applied to Man, 112, 115. 
Magnetism, 18, 19. 

Mahommedanism, the Declension of, 
501-504. 

Malebranche on the Emotions of 
Animals, 107, 108. 

Malthus on Population, 368, 369. 

Mammalia, Australian, 415, 416. 

Man and Animals, Physical Corre- 
spondence of, 112. 

Man and Nature, Distinction between, 
172-176. 

Man, Derivation of First Beliefs of, 3 ; 
his Place in Unity of Nature, 46, 
116 ; a Reasoning and Self-conscious 
Machine, 115, 116; cognisant of 
Instinct, 117-119; an Embodiment 
and Representation of the Super- 
natural, 276 ; a Product of Evolution, 
279 ; the Type and Image of the 
Supernatural, 308 ; his Relations to 
the Deity, 311-314; his Sense of 
Ignorance, 319-322 ; Moral Sense of, 
322-344 ; Spiritual Faculties of, 330 ; 
Social Instincts of, 341-343 ; Aim of 
Life in, 348 ; First Duty of, 348 ; 
Duty to Authority, 355-361 ; Help- 
lessness of, 356, 359 ; Appetite in, 
360 ; Reason in, 364 ; Exceptional 
Tendency of Development in, 365- 
367 ; Moral Perversities in, 372 ; De- 
gradation of Character and Condition 
of, 374-379 ; Primeval Condition of, 
393, 394 ; Origin and Distribution of, 
396-426 ; Free-Will in, 446 ; Self- 
consciousness in, 473 ; First Inven- 
tions of, 521 ; Conceptions regarding 
the First, 523-525 ; his First Con- 



sciousness of God, 537 ; Theories 
regarding Origin of, 538-540. 
Man-Formism, or Anthropomorphism, 
167. 

Man-Soulism, or Anthropopsychism, 
168. 

Marble Gall, the, 70-74. 
Marine Life, 232, 233. 
"Marriage by Capture," 389. 
Material Force, the Movements of, 
196. 

Materialism, Crude Conceptions of old, 
211. 

Matter and Force Cognisable as In- 
finite, 134, 135. 

Matter and Mind, the Relations of, 127. 

Matter, Primordial Combination of, 46 ; 
the Indestructibility of, 135-137, 142, 
143 ; Sir W. Hamilton on, 154, 155 ; 
Conceptions regarding Constitution 
of, 207-209; the "Impenetrability" 
of, 252. 

Meaning of "Barbarian"and "Savage," 
385. 

Measure and Operation of Light, 10. 
Mechanical Adjustment a ground of 

Faith, 121. 
Mechanical Adjustments of Organs of 

Sense, 62, 63 ; of Bodily Organs and 

Instincts, 78-80. 
Mechanical Force, Combinations of, 

95-97- 

Mechanical Motion a Common Ante- 
cedent of Physical Forces, 17. 

Mechanism of Living Bodies, Unity of 
the, 58. 

Mechanism, Principle of Human, 532- 
534- 

Mechanism of the Heavens, Unity in 

the, 9, 10. 
Memory, the Faculty of, 329, 331. 
Mental Affection, Sensation a, 61. 
Mental Intuition preceding Inquiry, 8. 
Mental Laws in Unity of Nature, isr. 
Mental Operations, Duality of, 118, 119. 
Mental Phenomena not Limited to 

Man, 175. 
Mental Relations, Outwardness of, 194, 

204. 



5^4 



Index. 



Merganser, the Red-breasted, 83, 99, 
100. 

Mergus Serrator, the, 83. 

Metals, Chemistry of the, 235-239. 

Metamorphoses of Insects, the, 264, 
265, 271. 

Metaphor, the Elements of, 79. 

Metaphors, the Use of, 292, 293. 

Metaphysical Concept of Causation, 
138, 142. 

Methods of Man and Nature, 192. 

Migrations, Human, 402. 

Microscopic Organism, a, 259. 

Mill, John Stuart, on " Utilitarianism," 
344 ; on Comte's belief, 495, 497, 498. 

Mimicry in a Moth, instance of, 87, 88. 

Mind and Matter, the Relations of, 
127 ; Dividing-line of, 175 ; Connec- 
tion of, 306, 307 ; the Analysis of, 
328. 

Mind and Spirit, Limitations of, 129- 
132. 

Mind in Man and Nature, 309. 
Mind, Operations of the, 114, 115, 118, 
122. 

Mind presupposed in Brain-structure, 
203, 204. 

Mind, the Supreme Faculties of, 164, 
165. 

Mivart's "Genesis of Species," 292. 
Modern and Ancient Atomism, 208, 209. 
Modern Ideas of God, 513. 
Modern Science, the Atom of, 214, 
215. 

Mohawks and Iroquois, the, 433, 435. 

"Molecular Arrangement," not self- 
determined, 39 ; relative to Material- 
ism, 251. 

" Molecular Conditions," Progress of, 
41, 42. 

Molecular Constitution Hypothesis, the, 

212, 213. 
Molecular Forces, Power of, 136. 
Monier Williams on " Hinduism," 517, 

521. 

Monogamy and Polygamy, 388, 389. 
Monotheistic Doctrine, Age of the, 2, 3. 
Moral Anomalies, Explanation of, 377. 
Moral Character of Man, the, 316. 



Moral Corruption by Law of Heredity, 
547- 

Moral Judgment, the Standard of, .343. 
Moral Obligation, the Sense of, 322- 

344. 355-359, 375- 536. 
Moral Perversities in Man, 372, 373, 

376. 

Morality, Definitions of, 453, 460. 
Moth, Instinct displayed by a, 87, 104, 
105. 

Motion the Cause of Heat, 139. 
Motive and Resulting Action, 335-338. 
Movements of Material Force, 196. 
" Movements of Plants," Mr. Darwin's 

Study of the, 284-287. 
Muller's " Hibbert Lectures," 457, 463, 

483, 485. 509, 521, 524. 
Mysterious Connection of Consciousness 
and Reason with Physical Apparatus, 
113, 114. 

Mystery of Gravitation, the, 210, 211. 
Myth, a Red Indian, 433. 

N 

Napoleon Buonaparte, Character 
of, 499. 

Narrow Sphere of Animal Perception, 

66. 

Native Purity of Gold, 236, 237. 
Natives of Tierra del Fuego, the, 405- 
409, 420. 

"Naturalist on the Amazon," Bates', 
427. 

Natural Powers, Delegation of, 187, 188. 

Natural Rejection, correlative to Na- 
tural Selection, 391, 424. 

Natural Selection, Meaning of the 
Phrase, 468. 

Nature and Man, Distinction between, 
172-176. 

"Nature abhors a vacuum," the old 
phrase of, 281, 289. 

Nature, "Innate Ideas" in, 90; the 
Sum of Intelligible Things, 125 ; Pre- 
visions in, 263 ; a Limitation of the 
Word, 274 ; not a System guided by 
Mechanical Necessity, 275; Instinct 
with Authority, 359. 



Index. 



565 



Nature of the Gall-fly's Instinct, 77. 

Nature of the Universal Ether, 13, 14. 

Nature-Worship, 309. 

Necessary Antecedence, 138. 

Necessity of a Clear Definition of Re- 
ligion, 464, 465. 

Nescience, the Philosophy of, 128. 

Nerve-tissues, Reflex Action of living, 
109, no. 

Nervous Action, 300, 301. 

Nest of the Gall-fly, 70-74 ; of the Dor- 
mouse, 72. 

Newman, J. H. , on the Godhead, 512. 

" New World," Configuration of the, 
404, 405. 

Non-living and Living, Gulf between 
the, 55. 

No Race without Religion, 478, 479. 
North American Indians, 430-435. 
"Nucleated Cell," the Living, 42. 

O 

Obedience Man's First Duty, 355. 
Objects and Senses, Adjustments be- 
tween, 63. 

Obligation, the Sense of Moral, 332- 

344, 355. 359, 375- 536. 
Ocean, the, and Origin of Life, 231, 
232. 

Odjis or Cohantis, Belief of the, 485. 
" Omne vivum ab ovo," 269. 
One-ness, the, of the System of Nature, 1. 
"On the Ignorance of Man," Bishop 

Butler, 165. 
Operation of Light, 10 ; Velocity of, 

11, 12. 

Operations not after Ordinary Laws, 69. 
Operations of the Logical Faculty, 169. 
Operations of the Mind, the, 11 

5j Ho, 

122. 

Order of Nature Dependent on Force, 
137. 

Organic Chemistry, meaning of, 243- 
245 ; in the Laboratory, 248 ; Segre- 
gation in, 254. 

Organic Compounds "built up," 247, 
248. 

Organic Life, Fundamental Facts of, 



48, 49 ; Adjustments connected with, 
55 _ 57 .' Innate and Instinctive Powers 
in, 92. 

Organic Structure, Theories regarding 
Relationship by, 52, 53 ; the Unit of, 
255. 

Organisation and Crystallisation, 261. 
Organism, Life the Antecedent of, 307. 
Organs of Sense, Adjustments of the, 
62. 

Origin and Distribution of Man, 396- 
426 ; Theories regarding, 538-540, 
543- 

Origin of Animal Worship, 488-495. 
Origin of Buddhism and Brahminism, 

5°5-5°9- 
Origin of Evil, the, 544, 545. 
Origin of Idea of Unity of N ature, 2, 3. 
Origin of Instinct, the, 118. 
Origin of Religion, Inquiry into, 450- 

519; Assumptions and Speculations 

regarding, 525-530. 
Origin of Whales, Professor Flower on 

the, 264. 

"Orthodox Cartesians," the View of, 
107. 

Ossification, F. A. Dixey on, 41. 
"Outlines of the History of Ancient 

Religions," Tiele's, 454, 478. 
Outsidedness and Insidedness, 193. 
Outwardness of Mental Relations, 194, 

204. 

Oxygenation of the Blood, Chemical 
Process of, 51. 

Oxygen, the Atom of, 218; Combina- 
tions of, 225, 226, 229. 

P 

Paleontology in reference to Evolu- 
tion, 429, 

Patriotism and Courage, 383. 

Pentarchy, the Great, of Physical 
Forces, 15, 16. 

Perception, an Accompaniment and Re- 
sult of Life, 57 ; Narrow Sphere of 
Animal, 66. 

Perception of Relations, Knowledge a, 
4, 5, *53- 



5 66 



Index, 



Perception, Range of Intelligent, 59. 
Perceptions, Instinctive or Intuitional, 
147. 

Perceptions of Purpose, the, 200-202. 
Personal Deity, Belief in a, 455, 456, 
527-529. 

Personality among Living Creatures, 
188, 190 ; in Energies of Nature, 469. 

Peru, the Indians of, 427. 

Perversions, Human, 367-373. 

Phenomena of Disease, the, 50. 

Phenomena of Instinct, the, 80. 

Phenomena of Life, the, 36, 37. 

Phenomena of Mind, the, 114, 115, 118 ; 
not Limited to Man, 175. 

Phenomena of Sensation, the, 61. 

Phenomena of Weight, the, 209-211. 

Philosophy of Nescience, the, 128. 

Philosophy, Inconsistency of Agnostic, 
279. 

Phrase, an old, of Aristotelian Physics, 

280, 281, 289. 
Phraseology, Scientific, 304, 305. 
Physical Basis of Life, the, 35. 
Physical Causation, the Chains of, 197- 

199. 

Physical Constitution of the Sun, 309. 
Physical Construction, Principles of, 
48. 

Physical Correspondence of Man and 

Animals, 112, 117. 
Physical Forces, the Great Pentarchy 

of, 15, 16; Transmutation of, 17; 

Uniformity of, 176. 
Physical Homologies between Man and 

Animals, 279, 280. 
Physical Machinery, a Complex, 259. 
Physical Pain and Pleasure, 360, 361. 
Physical Structure and Freedom of the 

Will, 123. 

Physical Truth, Forcible Expression of 
a, 281 ; Tyndall's Test of, 297. 

" Physiological Chemistry," Gamgee's, 
258. 

Physiologist, the Work of the, 6. 
Physiology, the Great Principle of, 260. 
Plant-growth, Spiral or Screwing, 284- 
286. 

Pleasure and Pain, the Range of, 59. 



Polygamy and Monogamy, 388, 389. 
Polytheism of Egypt, the, 3. 
Population, Malthus on, 368, 369; 

tendency of Law of, 423. 
Portuguese Sailors, Superstitions of, 

484. 

Possible Connection among the Forces, 
19. 

Potassium, 236 ; Affinity of, for Oxygen, 
240. 

" Potential Existence," 304. 
Potentiality in Germs, 263. 
Power and Impulse, 317, 318. 
Power of Molecular Forces, 136. 
Power, Reserve of, 132, 152. 
Powers and Functions of Atoms, 216, 
217. 

Powers of Thought and Contrivance, 
188, 189. 

Practical Uselessness of Utilitarianism, 
3Si. 

Practice of Worship, the, 455. 
Pre-established Harmonies in Nature, 
90, 94. 

" Prehistoric Man," Wilson's, 432, 435. 
"Prehistoric Times," Lubbock's, 430, 
43i. 

Prevision in Animals, 318. 
Previsions of Nature, 263. 
Primary Physical Agent in the House 

of Life, 50. 
Primeval Condition of Man, 393, 394. 
Primeval, Limited Signification of, 386, 

387. 

Primordial Combination of Matter, the, 
46, 50. 

Primordial Savagery, Theory of, 378, 
379- 

Principle of Development, 265. 
Principle of Explosive Forces, the, 136. 
Principle of Human Mechanism, 532- 
534- 

Principle of Physiology, the Great, 260. 
Principles of Physical Construction, 48. 
Processes of Creation, the, 270-273. 
Processes of Crystallisation, the, 39, 40. 
Processes of Organisation and Crystal- 
lisation, 261. 
Process of Development in Insects, 265. 



Index. 



567 



Progressive Advances of Reason, 437- 
440. 

Progressive Knowledge of Light and 

Sound, 158-162. 
Progress of "Molecular Conditions," 

41, 42. 

Properties and Composition of Water, 
230, 231. 

Propositions involved in Denial of An- 
thropopsychism, 277, 278 ; Refutation 
of, 278, 279. 

"Proteids," Chemistry of the, 245. 

Protoplasmic Blood-corpuscles, 50. 

Protoplasm, Prevalence of, 34 ; Con- 
nection between Life and, 35 ; the 
Molecules of, 42. 

Psychology, the Element of, 114. 

Purpose and Will, in Lower Animals, 
191. 

Purpose in Reflex Action, 303. 
Purpose of Man's Life, the, 348. 
Purpose the Better Half of Adaptation, 

201, 202. 
Punishment, the Fear of, 358. 

R 

Radiant Heat, Ether the Medium of, 
15 ; Definition of, 28 ; in Caloric, 31 ; 
Reflex Action in, 300. 

Reasonableness of Nature, the, 202. 

Reason, and Self-consciousness in Man, 
113 j Physical Foundations of, 123 ; 
and Knowledge, 169, 170 ; in Rela- 
tion to the governing Intelligence, 
364 ; Progressive Advances of, 437- 
440 ; Retrograde Developments of, 
440-445 ; the Origin of, 470. 

Reasoning implicit in Instinct, 105, 106. 

Reasoning, the Basis of, 120. 

Recognitions of General Truths, the, 
X45- 

Red-breasted Merganser, the, 83, 99, 
100. 

Red Indian Myth, a, 433. 
Reflection, the Faculty of, 329-331. 
Reflex Action, in Living Nerve-tissues, 

109, no ; Misuse of the Phrase in 

Physiology, 299-303. 



Reformers of the English Church, the, 
512. 

"Reign of Law," the, 143, 228, 283, 
292. 

Rejection and Selection, Natural, 391, 
424. 

Rejection of Creative Power after 
Human Fashion, Mr. Darwin's, 277. 

Related and the Real, the, 165. 

Relation of Animal Instincts and Laws 
of Nature, 67. 

Relation of Sexes in Primeval Man, 
387"3 8 9- 

Relationship between Light and Heat, 
28-30 ; of Man with World around, 
47 ; by Organic Life, 49 ; by Organic 
Functions, 51 ; with Vertebrate Ani- 
mals, 52, 53 ; an Inscrutable Secret, 
54 ; with Forces of Nature, 55 ; by 
Powers of Adjustment, 57 ; by Power 
of Sensation, 59 ; of Matter and 
Mind, 127 ; of Knowledge with 
Nature, 152 ; of Light and Sound 
with Sense and Knowledge, 162 ; of 
External Facts with Perception and 
Thought, 297 ; of Physical Power and 
Ability, 317. 

Relations of the Organic and Inorganic 
in Marine Life, 234, 235. 

Relations, the Perception of, 4, 5. 

Relative Knowledge, 152. 

Religion, the Origin of, 450 ; Schleier- 
macher's Definition of, 453 ; Tiele's 
Definition of, 454 ; a Belief in a 
Personal Deity, 455-464 ; Necessity 
for a Clear Definition of, 465 ; the 
Belief Fundamental to, 467-476 ; the 
Universality of, 478, 479 ; Difference 
between Popular Superstitions and, 
481 ; Comte's Four Stages of, 483 ; 
among African Negroes, 485-488 ; of 
Egypt, 488, 492, 518, 519 ; Tendency 
to Decline of, 500-509 ; of Aryans, 
515-518 ; Assumptions regarding 
Origin of, 525-530 ; Early Concep- 
tions of, 541. 

Renoufs " Hibbert Lectures," 3, 519. 

" Representability " of Physical Truth, 
297. 



568 



Index. 



Resemblance of a Work of Nature and 

of Art, 181 
Reserve of Power, 132, 152, 320 
Resources of Chemical Force, 222-224. 
Restigouche, the, 183. 
Restraint or Incapacity, 131, 132. 
Retina of the Eye, the, 62. 
Retrograde Developments of Reason, 

441. 

Riviera, Insect Life in the, 86. 
Roman Idea of Civilisation, 382. 
Rudimentary Organs in Whales, 266. 
Rudimentary View of Relation between 
Man and the World around, 47. 

S 

Sakya Muni (Buddha), 506. 
Savage Customs, 486, 487. 
Savage, Instinct of the, 147, 148. 
Savage, Meaning of the Term, 385. 
Savagery, Primordial, 378, 379, 394. 
Scarabeus Beetle, the, 492, 493. 
Schleiermacher's Definition of .Religion, 
453- 

Schools of Ethical Philosophy, the two, 
344. 

Science, Errors in Generalisations of, 
7, 8. 

"Science Primers," Professor Huxley's, 
261. 

Scientific Etymology, Theories of, 521. 
Scientific Phraseology, 304, 305. 
Sea, Variety and Fulness of Life in the, 
232, 233. 

Secrecy of Relationship between the 
Physical Forces and Life, 54. 

Secret Agencies of Nature, the, 39. 

Seeds and Eggs, Development of, 41. 

Seeming Accidental Action of Physical 
Forces, 177, 178. 

Segregation in Organic Chemistry, 254. 

Selection and Rejection in Nature, 391, 
424. 

Selection, Darwin's Theory of, 267. 
Selection, the Principles of, 7. 
Self-consciousness in Man, 473. 
Self-consciousness related to Structure, 
"3- 



Self-rectifying Power of Reason in 
Science, 443. 

Sensation, Localisation and Adaptation 
of, 51 ; an Accompaniment and Re- 
sult of Life, 57 ; Basis of Mental Fa- 
culties, 58 ; Machinery of, 58 ; Unity 
of, in Animal Kingdom, 59 ; a Char- 
acteristic Property of Life, 59, 60 ; 
a Mental Affection, 61 ; in Animals, 
108 ; Dependent on Structure, in ; 
connected with Organic Apparatus, 
113 ; Knowledge acquired by, 157, 
158 ; Light and Sound as, 158, 161. 
t Sense, Adjustment of Organs of, 62, 63. 

Sense-impressions, Affinities of, 64, 65. 

Sense of Ignorance in Man, 319-322. 

Sense of Moral Obligation, 322-344, 
355, 359, 375- 536. 

Sentient Actions of Lower Animals, 66- 
68. 

Separable Relations of Light and Heat, 
33- 

Separate Individuality, 56. 

Serpent-worship, 494. 

Service of Life, the, 58. 

Sexes, the, in Primeval Times, 387-389. 

Sharks, Fossil Teeth of, 180. 

Shaw, Alex., " On the Nervous Sys- 
tem," 48. 

*' Shorter Catechism," the, 348. 

Sight and Hearing, the Language of 
Sensation, 51. 

Singular in Man, the, 365-367. 

Significant Doubt, a, 185. 

Signification of " Primeval," 386, 387. 

So-called Transmutation of Forces, 17. 

Social Instincts of Man, 341-343. 

Sodium, 236. 

Solar Light, the Composition of, 21, 
22. 

Solar System, Forces Governing the, 9. 

Solitariness of Man's Position in Nature, 
Illogical Assertion of, 278, 279. 

Sound and Light, Progressive Know- 
ledge of, 158, 159, 161, 162. 

Sound subject to same Laws as Light, 
20, 22. 

Source of Declension of Mohammed- 
anism, 501-504. 



Index. 



569 



Source of Error in Idealistic Philosophy, 

iSo- 
Source of Delusion in regard to Inward- 
ness, 195. 

Space and Time, the Conceptions of, 

133, *34, i3 8 . !42. 

Special Development of Insect Life, 76. 

Special Functions of Animal and Vege- 
table Life, 42, 43. 

Specialists, the Researches of, 6. 

Species, Variations in, 266, 267. 

Spectrum, Colours of the Solar, 21, 22. 

Speech, Functions of, 522. 

Spencer's Definition of Life, 294, 295 ; 
his " Data of Ethics," 347, 351. 

Sphere of Animal Perception, 66. 

Sphere of the Inorganic, 251. 

Spider, Instinct of the, 67. 

Spiral or Screwing Growth of Plants, 
284-286. 

Spirit and Mind, Limitations of, 129- 
132. 

Spiritual Faculties of Man, 330. 
Spontaneous Turgescence in Plants, 285. 
Standard of Moral Judgment, the, 343. 
Starting-point of Mental Perceptions, 
34°- 

Statical Equilibrium, 135. 
Steam-engine, the " Governor" of the, 
196. 

St. Laurence, Tribes of the, 432-435. 
Strauss on the Denial of a Personal 
God, 459. 

Structural Adjustment, Authority of, 
531-535. 

Structural Development, 262, 263. 

Structure and Function, Unity of, 191. 

Structure of Man and Animals, Com- 
munity of, 53, 54. 

Structure of the Mother Gall-fly, 74, 
75- 

Structure, Organic, 249, 250, 253-257. 
Structure, Sensation Dependent on, 111. 
Subjects of Human Inquiry, the, 163. 
Subordination of Physical Causation, 
241. 

Substances, Elementary, 227-229, 236. 
Substitution in Operations on Metals, 
240. 



Sum and System of Intelligible Things, 
I2 5- 

Sun, Physical Constitution of the, 309. 

Supernatural, Exclusion of the, in Na- 
ture, 274 ; Different Meanings at- 
tached to the Term, 275 ; Man the 
Embodiment and Representation of 
the, 276 ; Professor Tyndall on, 276, 
277; Man the Type and Image of 
the, 308 ; Ambiguity of the Term, 
461, 462. 

Superstition and Religion, Difference 

between, 481. 
Supreme Authority, the, 353-361. 
Supreme Faculties of Mind, the, 164, 

165. 

Synthesis of Intuition, Experience a, 
149. 

System and Government of the Uni- 
verse, 310. 

System of Adjustment, the, 23, 24. 

System of Nature, One-ness of the, 1 ; 
Pervading Principle of the, 197. 

Systems of Belief, 453, 467. 

T 

Tasmania, the Natives of, 414. 

Teaching of Geology, the, 403. 

Teeth and Arrowheads, Difference be- 
tween, 180, 181. 

Teleological Tendency of Mr. Darwin's 
Language, 284. 

Teleology,DevelopmentTheory founded 
on, 289. 

Tendency of Religions to Decline, 500- 
509. 

Tendency to Deify Material Objects, 
479- 

Tennyson's " Two Voices," 118. 
Test of Fitness, Utility a, 349. 
Test of Physical Truth, Tyndall's, 297. 
"Text-book of Physiology," Foster's, 

no, 258, 302, 303. 
Theism, Origin of, 3. 
Theories of Scientific Etymology, 521. 
Theories regarding Origin of Man, 538- 

540. 

Theory of Development, the, 282. 



57o 



Index. 



Theory of Organised Experience, the, 
94- 

Theory of Primordial Savagery, 378, 
379- 

Theory of Utilitarianism, 344-355. 

"Things in Themselves," 152, 153. 

Thirst and Hunger, the Origin of, 448. 

Thomson, Sir W. , on Heat, 28; on 
Gravitation, 211. 

Thought an Accompaniment and Re- 
sult of Life, 57. 

Thought and Language, 108. 

Tiele's Definition of Religion, 454. 

Tierra del Fuego, the Natives of, 405- 
409, 420. 

Time and Space, the Conceptions of, 
133, 134, I3 8 , J 42. 

Time an Element in Development, 392. 

Tissues in Vegetable and Animal Or- 
ganisms, 255. 

Tradition of God, an Universal, 542, 
543- 

Transmigration of Souls, Doctrine of, 
5° 6 , 507. 

Transmutation of Physical Forces, 16, 
17. 

Triumphs of the Laboratory, 248, 249. 
Tropical America, Man in, 427. 
True Explanation of Appetite, the, 448. 
True Idea of the Godhead, 511. 
Truthfulness of Human Knowledge, 
the, 166. 

Turgescence of Plant-cells, 284, 285. 
Twisting Movements of Plants, 285, 
286. 

"Two Voices," the, of Tennyson, 118. 

Tyndall, Professor, on the "Identity of 
Light and Heat, " 25 ; on the Super- 
natural in Man, 277 ; on Develop- 
ment, 289, 290 ; his Test of Physical 
Truth, 297 ; on the Connection of 
Mind and Organism, 306. 

U 

Ubiquity of Luminiferous Ether, 30. 
Ultimate Connection among the Forces, 

Possible, 19. 
Ultimate Nature of Life, the, 48, 54. 



"Unconditioned," the, 154. 
Undulatory Vibrations in Ether, 29, 30, 

Uniform Antecedence, 138. 

Uniformity of Atoms, 215. 

Uniformity of Physical Forces, 176, 

Unity, Infinite, of Adjustment, 23, 24 ; 
of Light and Heat, 28 ; of Chemical 
Constitution of Man and Animals, 
47-51; of Animal Functions, 52; be- 
tween Sense-impressions and External 
Realities, 62-64 ; of Instinct with 
Nature, 66, 67 ; of Universal Adjust- 
ment, 79 ; between Structure and 
Freedom, 191 ; of Physical Powers, 
Dispositions, and Conditions, 318, 
319 ; of Origin and Distribution of 
Man, 396-398. 

Unity of God, the, 3. 

Unity of Nature, the, Origin of Idea of, 
2, 3 ; What is Meant by, 4 ; Higher 
Aspects of, 6 ; Danger of Inadequate 
Conceptions of, 7 ; Man's Innate 
Sense of, 8 ; Physical Signs of the, 
9-20 ; a Higher Kind than Physical 
required, 21 ; Cycle of Operations in, 
43 ; in what it Consists, 44 ; Man's 
Place in, 46-65, 116; in Man and 
Animals, 47-51 ; an Exceptional In- 
stance of the, 73-75 ; Limits of 
Human Knowledge in Reference to, 
126 ; Mental Laws in, 151 ; Univer- 
sality of Material Relationship in, 
158 ; in Relation to Organic and 
Inorganic Chemistry, 243 ; Use of 
Metaphors in describing, 293 ; Moral 
Character in the Light of the, 316; 
the Rule of Obedience consistent 
with, 353 ; Place of Appetite in, 361 ; 
Habits and Practices exceptional to 
the, 376, 377 ; Religion in the Light 
of the, 448-519 ; Relation between 
Religious Conceptions and Human 
Life in Light of the, 528, 530 ; Ten- 
dencies and Propensities exceptional 
to, 547 ; Conclusions to which it 
points, 547-552. 

Universal Ether, Fact of an, 11 ; its 
Nature, 13-15. 

Universality of Gravitation, 9, 10. 



Index. 5 7 1 



Universality of Religious Belief, 478, 
479- 

Universe, System and Government of, 
310. 

Unnatural Contrasts in Humanity, 370, 
37i. 

Unreasoning Instinct, 117. 

Unseen Factors in System of Nature, 

38, 39, 4i. 
Upwardness and Downwardness in 

Space, 193. 
Urea, Chemical Production of, 248, 

249. 

Use of Metaphors, the, 292, 293. 

Utilitarian Philosophy, the, 344-355. 

Utility and Fitness, Governing Prin- 
ciples in Nature, 282, 283. 

"Utility," Primary Signification of, 
345. 346, 352. 

V 

"Valency" of Atoms, the, 218. 
Variations in Species, 266, 267. 
Varieties of Gall-fly Production, 76, 77. 
Variety of Life in the Sea, 232, 233. 
"Variously Conditioned" Organisms, 
37, 38. 

Vedic Literature, the, 511, 514, 515- 

517, 520, 521. 
Vegetable and Animal Organisms, 

Tissues of, 255. 
Vegetable Juices, Exuding of, 69. 
Vegetable Life, Special Function of, 

42. 

Velocity of Light, 11, 12-14, 
Verifications of Science, the, 160. 
Versatility of Powers in Plant-life, 286. 
Vertebrate Animals, Relationship of 

Man with, 52, 53. 
Vibrations in Ether, 29. 30. 



Virtue and Civilisation, 383. 
Vital Force, a, 36. 

Vivisection, the Phenomena of, 109, 
110. 

Voice and Mind, 522. 
Voltaic Electricity and Chemical Force. 
18. 

W 

Wallace, Mr., 399, 415. 
Warranty of True Freedom, a, 125. 
" Watch Force," a, 36. 
Water, Composition and Properties of, 
230, 231. 

Water-ousel, or Dipper, 81-83, 89, 98. 
Waves of Sound, the, 22, 23. 
Weakness of Lowest Races of Man, 
429, 430. 

Weight, the Phenomena of, 209-211. 
Westwood's " Classification of Insects," 
77- 

Whales, the Origin of, 264 ; Rudi- 
mentary Organs in, 266. 

What, How, and Why, the, 163. 

Wild Duck, the Common, 85, 101. 

Will and Intelligence, Definition of, 
189. 

Will, the Faculty of, 330. 
Will, the Power of, 165. 
Wilson's " Prehistoric Man," 432, 435. 
Wonder, the Origin of, 470, 471. 
Work of Specialists, the, 6. 
Works of Nature and of Art. 187. 
Worship of Animals, 488-495. 
Worship, the Practice of, 455. 

Y 

Young, Dr. Thomas, on the Nature of 
Light, 13. 



a 



